Midwestern Thanksgiving Menu?

Cafe Society
1

Gonna vent now–but it’s about cooking.

I was looking for ideas regarding cookies for the upcoming holiday and decided to take a look at the “Midwestern Thanksgiving Menu” that http://staging.foodtv.com/foodtv/episode/0,6283,CL9766,00.html displayed and have to ask:

Midwestern what?
Midwestern in which country?
Midwestern on what PLANET?
The menu features “grilled duck breast with wild rice-dried cherry pilaf” and “persimmon flans with honeyed whipped cream”, and to make matters worse, it was compiled by a New Yorker! Ms. Moulton may have spent a short educational stint in Michigan, but she was born in New York, works in New York, and makes New York her home. I was born in Indiana, grew up in Indiana, live in Indiana. I may not be a cosmopolitan, world-weary bon-vivant, but at the very least I am likely to have some working experience with what is actually “Midwestern” and what is some foreigner’s bizarre idea of what she might fool others into believing is “midwestern”. While I do love a good pilaf, I can assure you that nowhere in the Midwest is “grilled duck breast with wild rice-dried cherry pilaf” on any Midwestern THANKSGIVING menu. Do you want a REAL Midwestern Thanksgiving menu? Here is an authentic Midwestern Thanksgiving menu, given imprimis and authority by generations of Midwestern Thanksgiving meals.

Roast turkey with bread stuffing or dressing.
Mashed potatoes.
Turkey giblet gravy.
Egg noodles, mixed, rolled out and dried in the kitchen where cooked.
Green beans, preferably home-canned from ones own garden, with bacon.
Biscuits (maybe rolls).
Sweet potatoes (marshmallows optional but often expected).
Macaroni and cheese (optional unless one has picky toddlers around).
Pumpkin pie with Kool Whip (whipped cream may substitute for Kool Whip in more traditional households).
Apple Pie (optional but sometimes expected)

Other elements may also appear, but the above are generally the fundamental Midwestern Thanksgiving fixings.

Dick breast and pilaf? Only a New Yawkur would consider that suitable to foist upon the world as part of a “Midwestern” Thanksgiving menu.

Okay, I’m done venting.

2

What, no cranberries?

I agree with your assessment, but I will add that I like the idea of the persimmon flan. It fits, but only because the persimmon is a very midwestern item. Having been born in Nebraska, raised in Kansas, and living in Indiana though, I’ve never actually eaten a persimmon, except when my friend’s father told me they were edible (however, I was about a month early on the whole ripness issue - blech!).

Also, you forgot the crappy fruit/marshmallow/jello salad that someone’s new girlfriend/wife shows up with.

-Munch, veteran of the: mom’s Thanksgiving dinner, dad’s Thanksgiving dinner, girlfriend’s Thanksgiving dinner unholy Triple Crown

3

Ah! Forgive me!

I completely forgot the Cranberry “sauce” straight from a can, sliced into disks!

4

Persimmons fall more into the “historical food” category. I like persimmon dishes myself, but they’re just not eaten much anymore, unfortunately.

5

No canned cranberry crap for us - homemade chunky kind with orange peel (or at least from the Marsh deli). Also, we prefer Redi-Whip or real whipped cream. Apple pie is now a must, considering that my hubby does a bang-up job on those. And we’ve always had green bean casserole instead of green beans with bacon. Then again, my parents were vegetarians up until the early 80s.

But that is definitely the LEAST Midwestern Thanksgiving menu I’ve seen in my 23 years as a Hoosier. Duck? We feed those at the canal. Persimmons? That’s the restaurant at Conner Prairie. Pumpkin = pie. Period. Corn casserole? Well, since I can’t tell what it is - MAYBE. But corn should be buttered in a bowl. Sheesh!

Oh, and Munch - I know what you mean. Mom’s family with mom; dad, brother, and SIL; hubby’s (immediate) family; and, occasionally, hubby’s SIL’s family. This year, things are easier. MIL and FIL are in South America, and hubby’s SIL’s family takes backseat to my mom’s side (my uncle is in very poor health.) We’ll eat with my dad on Saturday. Only two meals for gorging this year!

6

Born, raised, living in NE Illinois.

My family’s feast is very much like yours, Dogface, but substitute corn for green beans.

7

Casserole? Casserole? If you wanna be a true Midwesterner (or Minnesotan more specifically) you call it a hot dish and it has potato chips crunched on the top. Now, where’s the vomiting smiley?

8

stpauler, people from Minnesota shouldn’t be allowed to comment on midwestern jargon. For evidence, I present to the jury Exhibit A: Duck, Duck, Grey Duck (a bastardized version of Duck, Duck, Goose that is only found in Minnesota). There’s another one involving Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream, but I can’t think of the specifics.

:slight_smile:

9

Aww, c’mon, Duck Duck Grey Duck has HUGE benefits. What other game can you smack someone on the head and label them with an adjected that turns them into “grape duck” or “angry duck”.

Uff da.

:smiley:

10

To this displaced Chicagoan, Turkey Day has this menu:

Turkey. Roasted in the oven for about 9 hours until it’s just crossed the line into “dry” territory. :wink:

Home-made mashed potatos.

Yams - if you must.

Stuffing. No corn bread, raisins, sausage or other oddities. Just white bread, spices and optional for those that like 'em, the chopped up gizzards.

Green Bean Casserole. You know this one - with the french-fried onions and cream of mushroom soup.

Home-made gravy.

Cranberry sauce. Our family was big enough to cope with different tastes. Some of us like the stuff that comes with ridges and the smarter ones like the home-made.

Green and black olives and gherkins.

Dinner rolls.

Pumpkin pie with Cool Whip. One year we made a brave foray into also having an apple pie. At the end of the day, the pumpkin pie was gone and only two slices of apple had been taken.

Ducks were the birds in the back yard. Wild rice was unheard of. Likewise persimmons.

11

As a born and bred southerner now residing in evil Nu Yawk, I can say with conviction that you midwesterners really need to expand your culinary horizons. Big time.

12

Spoken like a true ethnocentric cultural imperialist, TeaElle. We are not discussion daily diet, we are discussing a “Midwestern Thanksgiving menu”.

13

It’s a Midwestern menu because they have, you know, ducks and cherries in the Midwest. (That’s how these magazine editors think, trust me.)

14

You forgot the little carton of egg nog. Everybody gets about two fingers, then it’s empty.

15

And you forgot the cocktail weiners (“Little Smokies”) in a crockpot, simmered either in bottled barbecue sauce, or a mixture of grape jelly and bottled chili sauce.

Lately we’ve added dill pickle rollups. Take some of that thin sliced dried beef, lay it flat, spread cream cheese on it, put a dill pickle on it and then roll the beef around the pickle and slice it into little wheels.

Yummy!

16

Well, wow. No one’s ever called me an ethnocentric cultural imperialist before. In this context, I think I’m flattered!

But seriously, you people are talking about cranberry goo in cans and Cool Whip as if they are real food. They are not real food. They are not meant to be a part of celebratory, convivial, holiday meals, tradition or not.

You and your families deserve better than the assortment of dairy industry by-products and high fructose corn syrup which is Cool Whip or the dregs of the dregs of the cranberry harvest which end up pulverized (with more high fructose corn syrup) and globbed together with low grade gelatin for that crap in cans.

I’m being nice about the green bean casserole, because at least it has a fibrous vegetable in it. I’m overlooking the traditional menu posted above which has five carb laden, starchy side dishes. And plain jane, exciting as a game of tic-tac-toe side dishes at that.

I’m glad that we’re not talking about a daily diet, because if this boring, uninspired, crappy-fakey food is what midwesterners consider fitting for an event meal for all their nearest and dearest, I don’t want to see what frightening things y’all are glomming into your pie holes on an average Tuesday. It must be positively appalling!

Sarah Moulton may be a New Yorker. But she’s also a gourmet chef who understands that enjoying tradition doesn’t need to mean eating bland, boring, same-old, same-old every year, and that having a delicious, exciting menu can enliven a celebration in a way that Cool Whip on a pie made from the recipe on the label of a can couldn’t begin to approach.

17

In defense of midwesterners, it isn’t really about the food anyway.

It’s about the people, family, getting them together, drawing names for Christmas, picking up college students at the airport, finding space for coats and babies and making sure nobody steps on grandma and that grandpa gets his chair.

I think most of us try to do one or two new “fancy” things every year, but at Thanksgiving the bottom line is making people comfortable, not showing off new recipes.

Chances are the person doing most of the work also works full-time outside the home, and even if he/she had the time and the money, is a bit reluctant to use Thanksgiving as a testing ground for haute cuisine.

Fix what you know people like, and lots of it, and just relax and enjoy your family.

18

So is my family Midwestern, then, or displaced Jerseyites? I’ve lived in Chicago (with a couple of breaks for school and such) since age 2, more than 30 years. Our typical menu:

Turkey, of course: hopefully from a real butcher and devoid of injected broth and hormones

Wild rice/mushroom/onion type stuffing (homemade), sometimes with slivered almonds and raisins

Stove Top, which my sister brings and is generally the only one who eats it

Homemade gravy

Cranberry sauce, both my mom’s homemade and the canned, sliceable stuff

Some kind of green veggie side dish (like steamed broccoli)

Wine, because family holiday gatherings are intolerable without it

Sweet potatoes…ingredients vary depending on who makes them. Most years it’s me, and they include pineapple, ginger, cinnamon, butter, orange juice, brown sugar, a dash of molasses, and a healthy glug of bourbon. Marshmallows on top, or my sister would never forgive me.

Sometimes homemade bread (generally my special rosemary/dill/onion recipe), depending on time and how ambitious I am

Random other assorted appetizers/salads/side dishes, depending on what guests bring

Dessert varies, but there is always either an apple or a pumpkin pie. In the past I’ve also made Derby pie (a big hit!) and chocolate mousse cake. Sometimes a guest will bring a dessert. There is always too much dessert, but that’s half the fun…how else would you get to eat leftover pie for breakfast the nest morning?

When I was in grad school in Bloomington, Indiana, I was very amused by the Thanksgiving food section supplement in the newspaper; basically, it was 20 different ways to make green bean and condensed mushroom soup casserole with canned French-fried onions on top. Eeeew!

19

I would not make green bean casserole, except that it is one of few veggie dishes I can get my stepfather to ingest. Otherwise, here’s our Thanksgiving menu:

Assorted pre-dinner munchies: shrimp with cocktail sauce, cheese and crackers, pretzels with honey-mustard and kalamata olive tapenade with cocktail rye bread.

Tossed salad with baby greens, mandarin oranges, dried cranberries and almonds.

Turkey - and for some reason, my family thinks I make the BEST. Turkey. Ever. and they will not stop pestering me for my secret. I’m willing to share - but first I have to figure this secret out myself. Far as I know it consists of: defrost and wash bird, stuff, bake, basting with melted butter, until the little pop-up thingie pops up.

Mashed potatoes (with lumps) and gravy (homemade).

Sweet potatoes: parboiled, peeled, then baked in a single layer on a cookie sheet. When nearly done, pour melted brown sugar and maple syrup concoction over, then continue baking until carmelized. Shoot any guest who suggests marshmallows (this would be my brother.)

Green bean casserole. I have no choice.

Corn, which I will mix into the mashed potatoes on my plate, causing my brother to say, “Ew.”

Roasted carrots & parsnips - the obligatory “second veggie” for those of us who won’t eat the creamed green bean thing.

Stuffing - basically chicken broth, onions and celery and bread. No fruit, no fish, no cornbread.

Cranberry sauce, both kinds.

Buttermilk biscuits and butter.

Pumpkin pie with the kind of spray-on whipped cream that comes in cans, and apple pie with almonds and vanilla ice cream.

Fruit tray - melon, berries, figs, dates, and so on.

Coffee, wine and beer for grown-ups, and sparkling juice for the kiddies (served in wine glasses with fruit kabob garnishes and tacky little umbrellas.)

20

What the hell are you serving? You got a legit rabbi doing the carving???