Thanksgiving foods you could do without

[s1m0n]

So, no watermelon or honeydew for s1m0n?

I could eat a watermelon, but I've never found much of a compelling reason to do so. Watermelon ranks somewhere between 'ho' and 'hum'. All the rest are nasty.

[s1m0n]

I'll side with Paul on the canned green bean casserole and add deviled eggs and all manner of turkey weirdness to the list . . . injected turkey, brined turkey, deep-fried turkey, you name it. There is something to be said for a roasted, all-natural turkey. Smoked turkey is good, but only on sandwiches.

Three other apparently traditional family favorites I've encountered and rejected were a mashed potato salad composed of potatoes held together with mayonnaise-like salad dressing, molded into a gargantuan lump using a dishpan and solidly covered with paprika; a crockpot of miniature sausages in ketchup and grape jelly; and a lasagna-esque casserole of baked beans layered with mostly raw bacon.

I could do without those white rolls sold in big bags, too.

Ah, the tragedy of being the only lamb born into a family of goats. Goats will eat anything, and don't seem to mind proving it in front of you.

[Roderick [Rod] Sprague IV]

Mercifully, my family has good taste, so I do not have to eat anything with marshmallows on it, or that is shaped like the inside of its mold, say. We also each have admittedly idiosyncratic personal tastes, so not taking a helping of something is not seen as an insult to the household. Now part of the tradition is latitude to experiment, so it is expected that some things will be different enough to at least add interest to the meal. I was told my sour cream cheesecake is not improved by replacing a package of cream cheese with an equal amount of blue cheese, though. Many of my friends and I at the Unitarian Universalist church potlucks like my little personal innovation. It adds an interesting tang to the cheesecake.

[Nanohedron]

So, no watermelon or honeydew for s1m0n?

I could eat a watermelon, but I've never found much of a compelling reason to do so. Watermelon ranks somewhere between 'ho' and 'hum'. All the rest are nasty.

Oh my. Well, all the more for me, then.

[Nanohedron]

The key is sausage. The past several years, I've made this sort-of casserole thing that has squash, diced apples, sausage (cooked till crispy, then drained of at least some of the fat), all mixed together, then topped with brown sugar and butter. Baked till the top is crisped.

Now THAT sounds good.

Um...wait. What kind of sausage?

[Doug_Tipple]

My wife said to tell Simon that anyone who doesn't like pumkin pie is un-American and ought to be shipped out of the country. I told her that I didn't think that it would be a big problem given Simon's present lattitude.

[s1m0n]

My wife said to tell Simon that anyone who doesn't like pumkin pie is un-American and ought to be shipped out of the country. I told her that I didn't think that it would be a big problem given Simon's present lattitude.

The whipped cream part is OK, but the pumpkin clashes with roast seal.

My best friend and her (american) husband got married on Canadian Thanksgiving a few years ago, and since then I've cooked the festive seal and we've had a party at their house every year. I like to cook and don't like to vacuum, so it works out. They live downstairs from me, so the catering is easy to manage.

Her husband's also the cook in her domicile, but he comes from Cincinnati, and from a family in which most food came from a can. I think that his first year here was the first time in thirty-odd years of life that he'd had scratch-made gravy, and it came to him like a religious experience. He's convinced that I'm magic, and every year he comes to watch me do it, as if he doesn't quite believe such a thing could be done, or that it could SO much better than canned chicken gravy.

This year I also astounded him when asked what side dishes he was used to besides turkey. He admitted to glazed carrots. I asked how they made them, and he told me it was another can. "Oh," I said. "Well, I can manage glazed carrots. It's just butter and brown sugar*."

He watched me like a hawk.

*I threw in some maple syrup just to show off.

[Lambchop]

Yes, I admit I'm a decadent fop when it comes to butter on my sweet potatoes. But even I know that you have to draw the line somewhere. Marshmallows. Ack. Pfftht. Glurg.

Hmm. I've been thinking about your problem at some length. How would you feel about a pecan streusel topping? Chopped pecans, a bit of flour, with BUTTER to stick them together in crumbly bits? Quite tasty!

[Nanohedron]

Yes, I admit I'm a decadent fop when it comes to butter on my sweet potatoes. But even I know that you have to draw the line somewhere. Marshmallows. Ack. Pfftht. Glurg.

Hmm. I've been thinking about your problem at some length. How would you feel about a pecan streusel topping? Chopped pecans, a bit of flour, with BUTTER to stick them together in crumbly bits? Quite tasty!

While I tend to think of sweet potatoes as being at their best when unadorned (butter is not adornment), I would certainly not recoil at this. It sounds quite good, and it wouldn't trammel the native dignity and appeal of the sweet potato. Thumbs up.

[Chiffed]

Whatcha still talking Thanksgiving for? It was weeks ago!

Turkey. Don't like them alive, either. Narsty critters.

[Nanohedron]

That's why I cook them.

[dwest]

That's why I cook them.

My wife hates to clean freshly procured birds from the wild, so I am left that task, seems like woman's work ta me though. Confuses the whole hunter/gatherer thingy.

[Lambchop]

Ah, the tragedy of being the only lamb born into a family of goats. Goats will eat anything, and don't seem to mind proving it in front of you.

Oh, most of those were favorites of other families, not mine. It was a distressing experience to discover the oddities that everyone else ate.

My family ritualized roast Butterball turkey, Arnold's white cubed herb stuffing made with turkey stock, celery, and sauteed onions, Ocean Spray canned cranberry jelly, canned green peas, canned glazed carrots, canned or fresh (!) green beans, mashed potatoes (instant when my mother thought she could get away with it), canned candied yams with brown sugar, cinnamon, and marshmallows, an iceberg lettuce, cucumber, and tomato salad with olive oil and vinegar dressing (that's all, just oil and vinegar--no spices), Arnold's white rolls, and a supplementary tray or two of celery stuffed with peanut butter, cream cheese and/or pimento cheese spread (the kind that came in a juice-glass jar), cucumber spears, canned black olives, and green olives stuffed with pimento, and canned, dyed-red (sometimes green!) candied cinnamon-y apples or apple slices. No one ever ate those apples. Dessert was always one each of Mrs. Smith's frozen pumpkin and apple pies with spray whipped cream.

For hors d'oeuvres, there would be a Sputnik-like, tinfoil-covered grapefruit stuck full of colored toothpicks bearing cubes of swiss cheese, canned black olives, and green olives with pimento, and Ritz crackers spread alternately with cream cheese and . . . yes . . . more pimiento cheese spread.

Beverages were iced tea, made by pouring boiling water over about 10 Lipton teabags in a stainless steel bowl, and percolated Maxwell House coffee. Sugar and half-and-half were available as additives, with the addition of lemon for the tea after I got uppity and developed airs. Water was never served, I think in an attempt to limit the condensation that soaked the table.

Christmas was same, sometimes substituting a ham for the turkey. Said ham was scored with a knife in a diamond pattern, the surface was rubbed with brown sugar and stuck with cloves, and canned pineapple slices were affixed with toothpicks. There was the addition of a Mrs. Smith's mincemeat pie and Christmas cookies.

[I.D.10-t]

Sweet potatoes with marshmallows and/or brown sugar. Sweet potatoes DON'T NEED MARSHMALLOWS OR BROWN SUGAR.

Ii remember introducing my mother to sweet potatoes that didn't come in a can. What happened to cooking in the 1950's-1970's?

[missy]

Her husband's also the cook in her domicile, but he comes from Cincinnati, and from a family in which most food came from a can. .

Now wait a minute - that's NO reason for him to not know how to cook.

Just watch if he offers to make you "chili", especially a three way or a coney (it's an genetic thing that you have to be born here to appreciate...........)