My mother-in-law makes “salads” that are jello, fruit, and maybe cottage cheese all mixed together and molded. My daughter’s favorite of this category is “pistachio salad” - pistachio pudding, crushed pineapple, cool whip, and mini marshmallows. I use unsweetened pineapple, so it’s got a little bit of healthy in it…
My grandmother always included succotash, peas, and polish sausage cooked in sauerkraut. She also made sweet potatoes unlike I’ve seen anywhere else - they’re boiled in their skins, cooled, peeled, sliced into 1/2" thick rings, and fried in butter till they just burn. I never liked them, but 3 of my sibs and my mom just inhale the things.
Neither do we (the marshmallow/sw. potato thing) and we do something similar - roasted cubes of potatoes with big chunks of onion, and then tossed with bacon at the end. (If you really like yer pig, cook the potatoes’n’onions in bacon fat instead of oil.)
My mother makes a Jello-O thingamabob every year: orange flavored Jell-O in a ring mold and chock-full of grated carrot. She started doing it to add color to the table (and, I strongly suspect, to sneak more veggies into everybody). Most people :dubious: the first time they encounter it; nearly all ask for seconds.
I usually end up eating with the international crowd, so anything goes. Everyone knows that turkey is traditional, so we have that, and I always make sure to bring pies (there are never enough pies at Thanksgiving, no matter how many there are), but the rest of the meal can include various stir-fries, curries, pad Thai, ribs, more different salads than you ever imagined exist, flan, assorted casseroles, potstickers, rice in addition to or instead of the mashed potatoes, you name it.
Elsewhere in Cafe Society I have already outlined The Dinner Thou Shalt Not Deviate From, but…
…back when Sis and I were kids, our mother used to make this gawd-awful salad… thingy… for Every Single Thanksgiving and Christmas meal we ever had.
The adults ate it, and apparently either didn’t mind it or were too polite to say otherwise, but neither of us girls would touch the stuff with a ten-foot pole. Other than lima beans, it was the only foodstuff I have ever in my life refused to eat - after having tasted it first, of course.
God bless the lady, but Mom never did quite understand why neither daughter wanted anything to do with it. After her death, Sis and I tacitly agreed that the stuff would never appear on either of our holiday tables for the remainder of our lives.
What was it, you ask? Lime jello mixed with sour cream, and I think crushed pecans, chilled, then served on a bed of lettuce. :::shudder::: Nasty, nasty, nasty!
Not too unconventional, but a new favorite of mine is Chipotle Cranberry Sauce. I think regular cranberry sauce is too sweet, so I like the spiciness of this one.
If wasn’t until I got married that encountered unconventional thanksgiving dishes.
Every. Single. Year. I am forced fo eat thanksgiving dinner at my MIL’s house ::groan::
One of her staples every Thanksgiving and Christmas is this… stuff. I don’t know what it is. After cooking her ham, she takes the water from the pan and puts it in a crock pot. She then adds approximately twice that amount worth of egg noodles. She let’s that cook until virtually every bit of moisture is gone, and the resulting goo has the consistency of school paste. My wife’s family eats this crap with relish. Absolutely disgusting.
Another thing they do is serve Super Bowl Party-type snacks as side dishes. Crackers and chips with dip. Sliced cheese and Pepperoni. Jerky.
All served on paper plates with plastic silverware, and eaten on the couch.
My uncle’s ex-girlfriend used to bring the best lasagne. It was so good, and so much better than boring old turkey. Other than that it’s pretty standard stuff all the time. I’ll be going to my in-laws this year, maybe I’ll offer to make Swedish meatballs because that’s what I’m going to bring to Christmas with my family. Practice, so I can one day hope to be as good a meatball maker as my Grandma was.
I had to laugh at this. Around here (middle Tennessee), it’s super easy to tell the natives from the transplants at the grocery store around Thanksgiving and Christmas. The natives go for stuff to make or flat out buy sweet potato pie. The transplants go for pumpkin.
In my own Appalachian / midwestern family, beef and noodles as a side dish for both winter holiday meals has been our tradition for as long as I can remember.
I like to make corn on the cob. Just wrap it in foil, add some butter and maybe a few shakes of cajun season or old bay. Then just put it in the oven. I think it fits in nicely with the standard dishes and most everybody likes corn on the cob.
On Jacques Pepin’s show today he made Cauliflower Gratin. If you know how to make a white (bechamel) sauce it should be pretty east. It looked delicious. I just bought some cauliflower at the farmers market today (and bought some gruyere last week) so I’ll be making it this week.