Over in a thread in GD, monstro mentioned a typical Thankgiving dinner ala monstro. This was part of a discussion of “white” culture vs whatever. I looked at the menu and saw a typical Southern Thanksgiving. A little different from what I am used to, but I’d accept a dinner invitation anytime for that kind of food. My typical menu has varied since I left home, but there are some constants.
Mom’s Thanksgiving Dinner
Turkey
Dressing
Mashed Potatoes w/turkey gravy
Sweet Potatoes
Green Bean Casserole
Parker House rolls
Cranberry Sauce (smooth)
Olives and gherkins
Pumpkin and Mincemeat pies with whipped cream or hard sauce.
Water, coffee or iced tea to drink.
For the last 23 years, some buddies and I have gone camping in the desert over Thanksgiving. Out there, our typical dinner consists of:
Turkey (Paul does something different every year. We have buried it, deep-fried it, roasted it on a spit, etc.)
Dressing
Pea Salad
Cranberry Sauce
Olives and gherkins
Turkey gravy
Harvest pie
Various wines with dinner, brandy and Grand Marnier as afters.
All of this done over a campfire and Coleman stoves.
What got me thinking about this was monstro’s inclusion of greens as part of the dinner. I may have to insist on that this year as an addition!
So…what do you fix, and why? Anything different? Include recipes please!
Mom’s been changing the menu the last couple of years, much to the condemnation of the family. She says she’s bored with the same ol’ same ol’, they say they don’t give a crap and where are the damn crescent rolls this year?
Generally, it looks much like yours, but with a few “frou-frou” dishes thrown in. She gathers the recipes and ingredients, and I go over in the wee hours of the morning to cook with her.
Turkey Mushroom and sage bread dressing Mashed Potatoes
Gravy
**Green Bean Casserole **(the one with the French Fried Onions on top, natch!) Mashed Sweet Potatoes with butter, brown sugar and chopped pecans. It’s more of a desert than a side dish, but we serve it with the dinner anyway. Whole Mushrooms roasted in a creamy parmesan sauce with breadcrumbs on top Creamed Spinach - she keeps trying a new creamed spinach recipe every year and she’s never happy. I swear, this year I’m stopping at Boston Market on the way over and switching her creamed spinach out with theirs when she’s not looking so she stops searching! Carrots - usually steamed with dill, sometimes with an orange ginger glaze. She’s been changing these a lot too, and factions are beginning to form. Sour Cream Crescent Rolls, made from scratch, not the refrigerated stuff. They are divine, but don’t last long - three hours out of the oven, and they start tasting stale.
Homemade Whole Berry Cranberry Sauce Jellied Cranberry sauce, Green Olives, Black Olives and Sweet Gherkin Pickles - all from jars and cans, not homemade. Only not homemade things on the table.
Those are the staples, with pumpkin, cherry and apple pies for desert, and store bought birthday cake, because my birthday is within a few days of Thanksgiving. There are usually two or three other side dishes that no one remembers because they change every year.
Oh, and we have water, white wine, red wine and non-alcoholic “wine” to drink. Kids drink milk with the meal. Dad #2 always has a big glass of milk after the meal, but not during. Coffee and tea are served with the deserts.
We’re from the South Suburbs of Chicago, if you’re interested in collecting geographic data.
salad
lasagne
turkey
sausage stuffing
mashed potatoes
green beans (not casserole, though)
some other vegetable depending on what I’m in the mood for
dinner rolls
pumpkin pie
a few varieties of cheesecake
Usually wine or mixed drinks before dinner, wine, soda, or water with the meal, coffee with desert.
A huge roast turkey done just right, stuffed with bread dressing. Carrots, mashed potatoes, all slathered in rich turkey gravy, plus cranberry sauce. Piping hot rolls, of course. Followed by pie.
Turkey
Dressing
Jellied Cranberry sauce (served in the shape of the can)
homemade whole berry cranberry sauce
Sweet peas
maccaroni and cheese
Glazed ham
Pumpkin pie
Sweet potato pie
apple crisp
Rice and gravy
Green beans
Turkey
Ham
Rice
Giblet gravy
Stuffing (home made, with celery)
Rolls (usually crescent rolls)
Broccoli casserole (cream of mushroom soup, cheese, breadcrumbs/butter on top)
Cranberry sauce (made with real cranberries, simmered on the stove, one of my favorites at holiday dinners)
5 cup salad (marshmallows, mandarin oranges, pineapple, sour cream, shredded coconut)
Sweet potato casserole (with the best brown sugar, pecan topping)
Frozen cranberry loaf (cranberries, coolwhip, pineapple)
Mince meat, cherry, apple pies
Used to be the regular turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, dressing, sweet peas, pumpkin pie, pecan pie, cranberry sauce. Maybe some green beans or chess pie.
One holiday a few years ago, though, it was determined that no one in my family actually likes traditionally prepared turkey. It’s been pretty weird since then… and it pretty much all depends on who does the shopping/cooking.
In my family, the Thanksgiving menu is pretty flexible. There are a few features that are the same from year to year:
Turkey with gravy
Homemade cranberry sauce, from whole berries, water, sugar, and cinnamon. None of the stuff out of the can for us!
Pumpkin pie, mainly because it’s good. I’ve offered to do sweet potato pie this year, and my folks have been giving me the thumbs-up on it.
The rest is really pretty negotiable. There’s some sort of starchy and/or filling side dish, often sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, and/or squash of some kind. We’ve had stuffing some years. If there are sweet potatoes or sweet squash, there’s often some other side dish that’s not sweet. The only real rules are that the food has to be something indigenous to the Americas (we’ve had side dishes made with corn, sweet potatoes, wild rice, and various types of squash) and it can’t be overtly something that wouldn’t be established as part of at least semi-mainstream culture in the US.
Oh, and there should be some balance. Not everything can be sweet, but there must be at least one sweet thing (if only the pumpkin pie.) Not everything can be heavy, so we often have salad either with or before the meal.
I have never had turnip greens, collard greens, or macaroni and cheese at Thanksgiving.
Oh, and even though none of us is all that observant (we’re Jews–Ashkenazi flavor), and we eat Chinese food and Ethiopian food and bacon-wrapped shrimp, we just sort of semi-instinctively avoid things like macaroni and cheese or bread and butter as part of Thanksgiving dinner. I’m not quite sure why. I wasn’t even aware that we did this until, while I was looking for new ways to cook our turkey, I came across a recipe that included basting the turkey with butter. I think I physically shuddered at that. I can’t say I understand why. I’m sure I would have happily eaten butter-basted turkey in lots of circumstances. I’ve had delicious cordon bleu. Hell, I’ve eaten live bugs and enjoyed it, but somehow the idea of basting a turkey with a dairy thing in my own oven and serving it for Thanksgiving dinner struck me as stomach-churningly wrong. Go figure.
Turkey
Dressing
Mashed potato
Mashed turnips
Gravy
Cranberry sauce (jelly, whole, and with orange - we all like different)
Green bean casserole
Green olives
Sweet pickles
Rolls
Butter
When I was still in Maryland, I was developing a strong taste for stuffed ham and yams, but you can’t find those out here.
Turkey (usually a whole turkey and a separate breast)
Ham
Hamburgers (my great-uncle started this tradition a few years ago before he passed, and the kids like it)
Mashed potatoes
Dressing
Green beans
Creamed corn
Deviled eggs
Salad
Assorted casseroles
Rolls
Cokes, tea and coffee to drink.
Can you tell my grandmother was a home ec teacher for 20+ years?
The usual stuff, but brine the turkey a la Alton Brown, and then cook it on the grill on a rotisserie (sp?). And, the best cranberry recipe (came from Epicurious:)
Take 2 bags fresh cranberries, wash them & pick out the soft ones. Spread in a 10 x 13 dish. Add 2 cups sugar (I use brown sugar) and 1/4 tsp cinnamon, and stir. Cover tightly with foil, bake at 350, stirring once, until berries are tender & juicy. Remove from oven, stir in 1/4 cup bourbon. Refrigerate. Make these a few days ahead. The bourbon makes them delish and no one can figure out the flavors. So Good!
That sounds very interesting. The wife is always trying to “elevate” out “guys camping Thankgiving” so I will show her that recipe. I have already decided to add greens to the menu…maybe a mix of spinash and turnip. This cranberry sauce should really go over well.
We don’t do TG anymore since it’s just the three of us, but when my family was all together:
Turkey
Ham
Dressing with turkey gravy on the side
green bean casserole
sweet potato casserole (with marshmallows…don’t even get me started on the year Aunt Linda used walnuts instead!)
canned cranberry sauce (except that year Aunt Linda got creative again)
deviled eggs
broccoli cheese casserole (same aunt, but met with approval)
celery sticks with cream cheese (busywork for the kids)
some sort of salad with apples, raisins and mayo that was oddly tasty
Nanny’s rolls
Desserts:
pumpkin pie
chess pie
banana pudding
pumpkin pie
various homemade candies like divinity and haystacks
All this was repeated for Christmas and Easter (minus the turkey)
The only acceptable drink was Nanny’s sweet tea, made with the little saccharine tablets. Hideous stuff but nobody was given a choice.
Depending on who won the “who’s cooking Thanksgiving?” battle (me, usually), this is our meal:
Turkey
Ham
Dressing
Mashed potatoes
Gravy
Crudite platter
My special recipe cranberry sauce
Salad with candied walnuts
Pecan pie
Rolls
Cranberry punch (about halfway through the cooking I’m having some with vodka).
Iced tea, water, milk, beer, etc.
Sometimes (but not often) my SIL wins the dinner battle and we have to endure green bean casserole and other poorly contrived and atrociously executed dishes that are only nominally edible. That woman couldn’t cook her way out of the Campbell’s Soup Factory if they gave her a can opener and a two day head start.
The basics: turkey, ham, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy.
We always have a meat pie. And beans (which is a hot casserole with kidney beans, northern beans, lima beans and a sweetish sauce).
We usually have turnip and squash. Sometimes sweet potatoes or carrots.
In my family, we’ve not really into cranberry sauce or green bean casserole. As I recall, we used to have them because they were traditional but I guess we gradually realized nobody was eating them so they kind of faded away.
Homemade ice cream for desert. Always vanilla because that’s the only flavor my brother will eat.
Mom and Dad usually do the cooking. I’ve been meaning to get Mom’s dressing recipe and will probably learn it this year. Mom’s dressing is cornbread crack.
Chicken n’ dressing (boneless slivers of chicken in a bed of cornbread dressing)
Roast turkey
Sage cornbread dressing(with and without oysters)
green beans(just beans, not the casserole)
mashed potatoes with chicken gravy
sweet potatoes with marshmallows
Some other sort of sweet potatoes
stuffed celery
cranberry sauce (homemade and canned)
homemade rolls
assorted pies and desserts
