Started wondering today what my northern neighbors consider the traditional or typical Thanksgiving dinner.
Roast turkey, with stuffing and gravy, mashed potatoes, and tiny peas.
It was very yummy!
(No fancy side dishes, we are just two people!)
Followed by pumpkin pie with whipped cream, with tea.
(As we are in Ontario, we were directed to have only our household, no one outside of it invited in. It was different for a lot of families for sure! Everyone I know followed the directive, but I did wonder if such a thing would fly South of the border.)
So the typical menu is somewhat similar to ours in the US?
Very much so, with some regional differences thrown in, of course!
Very similar to the US. I like to cook and often try new variations. But the traditional thing is usually roast turkey, cranberry sauce, sage stuffing, gravy, two roast vegetables (often carrot and Brussels sprouts), some form of potato, dinner rolls and (pumpkin) pie.
The diner version uses canned cranberry sauce, canned gravy, boxed stuffing and frozen peas ‘n carrots. It’s okay, but fresh gravy made properly is ambrosia. In Quebec, toutiere and wine are required. I like to use squash, perhaps for the soup course. Some like to use Pillsbury croissants. I bake my own bread, usually.
Some substitute baked ham, lamb, tofu, duck or chicken for the big bird. I tend to like spicier versions of sides with added jalapeño. Their are many good recipes in the Epicurious Cookbook, Bobby Flay’s Mesa Southwestern Cookbook and from America’s Test Kitchen.
The only U.S. Thanksgiving foods (as seen on TV) that seemed exotic to me as a kid (in Canada) were yams with mini-marshmallows and “green bean casserole”, whatever that is.
No doubt there’s someone in Canada that considers those dishes a holiday tradition, but not in my family.
I haven’t had a traditional Thanksgiving dinner in ages. Given the menu that others have described, (and which I remember well, from my younger days) it’s too much trouble for just one person. So, to me, it’s just another dinner. What will I have tonight?
I did spend my day at the local racetrack, which offered a turkey, potatoes, stuffing, veg, cranberry sauce, and gravy dinner. I saw people eating it, and it looked like the kind of dinner you’d get at the racetrack. No thanks. I’ll warm up some chili that I made the other day.
Green (string) beans baked in a cream-of-mushroom sauce, usually made with Campbell’s soup. Believe it or not, it’s quite tasty!
A coworker of mine, originally from Canada, wasn’t sure his family ever celebrated Thanksgiving, but described a harvest dish cooked in a large pot with “salt meat on the bottom, and layers of vegetables on top, all boiled together” that he thought might have been a Thanksgiving dish. He seemed to be under the impression this was a traditional meal (they ate it every year) but wasn’t really sure.
Does this sound familiar to anybody?
Jiggs’ Dinner, perhaps? Salt meat definitely sounds like something from Newfoundland.
A Franco-Manitoban friend of mine (from grad school) once brought a dish to a Thanksgiving dinner that was basically plain macaroni with pan drippings poured on it. He said that was a traditional Thanksgiving dish in his family, but no one else was familiar with it.
It ain’t a green bean casserole if it ain’t topped with French fried onions. Without that it’s just green beans cooked in Cream of Mushroom soup.
Maybe. That was as close as I could come in my searches. It sounds good, and fairly different from the New England boiled dinner I’m familiar with.
Almost exactly. The main difference is that Canadian Thanksgiving is not as much of a major holiday as in the US (that is, it’s a national holiday, but not one with an extra-long weekend and major family get-togethers – that stuff happens at Christmas).
In terms of food, for small gatherings, various other things may be substituted for a huge turkey, just as anywhere else. Roast beef, ham, and various other roasts seem to be popular. There are boneless turkey breast rolls of various qualities available, the best of which (from my favourite little boutique grocery) is basically solid white turkey meat. If served with the wondrous store-made cranberry sauce, stuffing, and amazing turkey gravy from the same place, homemade mashed potatoes, veggies, and whatever else, for small parties it makes for a very authentic Thanksgiving dinner with minimal fuss.
You mean it’s not “Peameal bacon, Montreal smoked meat or a slice of tourtiere with poutine and bannock on the side, and nanaimo bars and maple taffy for dessert.”?
It isn’t. But this would do well should you ever open up the Canadian themed restaurant Hosers. Now I’m steamed that I’ve never had “maple taffy”.
Believe it or not, I’d actually have competition around here if I opened a Canadian restaurant. There’s a place not too far away named the “Maple Leaf Diner” that sells some of that stuff I mentioned.
Corned beef and cabbage my Nova Scotia mother called their variant of The boiled dinner or Jiggs Dinner. Actually ingredients would vary a little depending on what was to hand. In BC, 1960s, yams/sweet potatoes with marshmallows and green bean casseroles were common. It wasn’t French-fried onions that went on top, but French’s fried onions out of a can.
He just followed up on our conversation, unsolicited, to send me this recipe as very similar to the dish in question: