A preemptive Thanksgiving rant

The BBQ Pit
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This rant is directed to many various and sundry sub-par chefs, but mainly to my girlfriend’s sister, with whom I’ll be spending the holiday.

Stuffing should contain no meat. Period. There’s a reason it’s called bread stuffing, and that’s because it’s not made with 100 fucking percent sausage. Sausage stuffing is just greasy and gross. And like we need another meat to compete with the turkey. Then again, the sausage has at least some moisture content.

But you were nice enough last year to make a meatless stuffing. Thank you. But here’s a newsflash. Stovetop Stuffing is crap. It’s salt and phlegm in a box. And it’s not supposed to come out like soup.

Cranberry sauce: This is my biggest pet peeve. It’s food! It is not a decoration! Good god, woman, last year you put out one teaspoon of the stuff in a little relish dish in the middle of the table. And it still held the shape of the can. Have you ever had real cranberry sauce? Made from, oh, I don’t know, real cranfuckingberries? The stuff is awesome. It’s an actual food. It’s made to be eaten.

Green bean and onion casserole, on the other hand, is not food. It’s a 50 year old marketing ploy by Campbell’s. Toss it out.

Sweet potato casserole: Freeze, scumbag! Put down the bag of marshmallows, and just walk away. That’s right. Keep those puffed sugar abominations the hell away from the kitchen.

Dinner rolls: Ever heard of them? What the fuck is up with those dense sticky sweet cinnamon rolls that sit like a brick in your stomach? Afraid someone is going to still be hungry enough to try your Bird’s Eye frozen veggies?

Lastly, and this is a general rant to the world: For the last fucking time, mince meat pie does not contain meat! I swear, some people are convinced that it contains pig snouts, squid, and fried Spam. Besides, the was no meat left to put in the pie. It’s all been used in the stuffing!

sigh Sometimes being an obnoxious food snob hardly seems worth the time.

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Mother says, “It’s so nice to have the whole family together,” as dishes and flatware fly.

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My rant about Thanksgiving is that the food is not adjustable for small families. How long do you think it will take 2 people to eat a 25 pound turkey?

(And yes, we do have family, but they are the other side of the world, in a land where they don’t celebrate Thanksgiving).

Maybe we’ll just have some seafood and salad for our Thanksgiving.

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I like my turkey chokingly dry. I like to smother it with giblet gravy. I also want the same gravy on my mashed potatoes. I like sopping my gravy with the rolls. A plate too flat to hold at least a quarter-inch pool of gravy is an abomination. I like to keep the gravy boat close to my plate, and I give everyone the evil-eye who dares reach for it. I always keep a spare cup or two of gravy stashed away just in case.

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“Stuffing” is something of a misnomer, as actually putting in the bird, or anywhere near it, causes it to become a noisome, liquescent horror worthy of H.P. Lovecraft at his peak. Stuffing belongs in a separate dish in the oven. Then, you can get away with putting some sausage in it if that is how your taste runs. Or not.

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tdn, why don’t you offer to bring the stuffing and cranberry sauce this year? I’m not kidding.

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Good call on the gravy. Please just tell me it’s not that crap from a jar.

Another rant concerning dry turkey – please don’t look at me like I’m a charity case just because I’ll “accept” a drumstick. That’s the moistest, juiciest cut of all, and I’m more than happy to take it. I may be weird, but eating dark meat does not make me a communist, as some peoples’ astonishment would have you believe.

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Interesting idea on the stuffing. I’ve already got the cranberry sauce covered.

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Ah, but you’ve never had mine. :slight_smile: Just the right amount of moistness, joined at the hip with succulent turkey goodness. You can’t really eat it, it’s more like you make love to it.

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Oh, dear.

And here I am with three boxes of Stove Top ready to cook in a casserole dish.

Oops. I’m making this too, although I’m going to add real garlic and cheese.

[/QUOTE]

I am ashamed. I’m not good enough to cook for tdn. :wink:

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But I like the green bean and onion casserole!!!

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tdn: A-fucking-men! I like plain ol’ sage-and-onion stuffing: soften a chopped onion and a bit of chopped celery in butter in a pan, add cubed bread (day old, but not toasted or all dried out) add sage and thyme, salt and pepper to taste, fry a short time to brown the bread a little, then pack loosely in the bird and roast. No sausage, no oysters, no chestnuts - none of that extra shit. It comes out moist and fluffy and not at all “liquescent”, BrotherCadfael.

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Damn straight, missy. :wink:

I beg of you not to do this thing with the Stovetop. Give it to the dog, I beg of you. I’ll even share my recipe for culinary orgasm on this board. Small price to pay in the Fight Against Cruelty to November.

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Liberal at last, I meet somebody who really knows what Thanksgiving is about. The gravy! If the gravy ain’t right, throw the rest out!

Oh and while we’re on food rants, can we just give those green, red, and yellow Hell-o moldsa rest this year? Why do you insist on making things that look like congealed snot, blood and pee? What’s even worse is, that’s what they taste like too. They are the work of demon possessed church ladies! I don’t want to see one sitting in front of me while I’m trying to eat. GAAAAAAAAAAH!!!

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Okay, give me a culinary orgasm. But be gentle. :smiley:

I’ll see if Ivylad can pick up the ingredients tomorrow.

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Sorry, you are dead wrong. Pork sausage and the shredded bits of turkey left over after making the stock go nowhere else except in the stuffing. Then the onions, celery, breadcrumbs, and sage. A couple of beaten eggs to hold it together. This Is Stuffing.

I Have Spoken.

And it’s my kitchen.

But you are correct about the Stove-Top[sup]TM[/sup]. It is Satan’s Boogers in a can.

Regards,
Shodan

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ivylass, don’t fret. I’m not good enough, either. I’m bringing cinnamon rolls to my Thanksgiving celebration.

:D&R:

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Right on.

I never fry the bread, and I use fresh sage, rosemary,and thyme (sorry S&G, no parsley). Sometimes I’ll crumble a corn muffin into it, but usually I can’t be arsed. And I moisten it with a tiny bit of chicken broth. (If I’m feeling ambitious, I make my own broth from the neck and giblets.) Not over-moistening is the key to having it come out just right.

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Last year, I cooked the entire T-day dinner, but this year, my mother=in-law is doing it, but she asked me to bring the green beans and brownies. One of the family really likes the cranberry glop in a can and Stovetop Stuffing so those are on the menu, but I’m also bringing alternatives for both–homemade cornbread stuffing (day-old cornbread mixed with sage, thyme, sauteed onion, and celery, and chicken broth for moisture) and cranberry relish (1 bag cranberries, 1 oz. candied ginger, and a navel orange, all macerated in a food processer and put in a sealed container overnight to let the flavors blend.). I’m making the green beans with slivered almonds, dried cranberries, honey, and orange zest.

The brownies will be by Pillsbury, however.

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Regarding the green bean casserole, I never saw this until I married a woman from Minnesota. The proper way to serve green beans is to cook them Southern style — that is, with fatback — until they are so soft that they hang from the fork like Salvador Dali clocks. An excellent option is to add in some white shoe-peg corn. (But not too much.)

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Gobear, your cornbread stuffing sounds wonderful!