Notes for my daughter, about Thanksgiving

So far none of my children will cook with me. I am not the most patient teacher, unfortunately. Last night I was in the kitchen wondering if this new baby will like to cook, and what she will be like next Thanksgiving. This, I wanted to tell her, is how we do a Gladly Thanksgiving.

The key is butter. Pounds of butter. It is a myth that Thanksgiving is about turkey or autumnal vegetables. It's really the butter.

A couple of days in advance you can make the cranberry sauce: a package of cranberries, boiled in apple juice with a tiny pinch of salt and an equally tiny pinch of ground cloves. Add a generous spoonful of honey, but ignore the people who wrote the recipe on the package calling for a cup of sugar. Ick! Cranberry sauce needs to be a little bit bracing or you might as well just put it on top of your ice cream.

You can also make the cornbread for the stuffing: all cornmeal, no sugar. Most traces of my Southern roots have been obliterated by 20 years in the Midwest, but this time of year the truth will out: sugar in cornbread is for heathen Yankees.

Last night I also made stock for the stuffing and the gravy: carcass of a roasted chicken goes in the crockpot with a quartered onion, a stalk of celery and a fat carrot in chunks, a bay leaf and some peppercorns. It can simmer all night.

This morning I will make the pastry for the pies (pumpkin and pecan, always and forever) and this evening I will roll it out so it doesn't shrink in the oven tomorrow. I'll cook minced celery and onion in a rather alarming amount of butter and mix them with crumbled cornbread and torn sage leaves. Most of it will go in a baking dish with stock to moisten and toasted pecans on top, but a little bit will go in the bird (leaving plenty of space for air to circulate so I don't give anyone salmonella).

Today I will also peel the sweet potatoes and boil them in heavily salted water. They'll be whipped with orange juice, a bit of orange oil, cinnamon, crushed pineapple, and a truly astonishing amount of butter. Tomorrow they'll go in the oven with pecans on top and maybe a sprinkle of coconut. Hmm, this is getting a little pecan-heavy but it sounds so good.

We'll need a bit of green and crunchy to offset all the mushy food. If I have time today I'll roast butternut squash cubes for dinner and put the leftovers in a salad tomorrow with crisp greens, thin-sliced lemon-marinated red onion, crumbled feta, and a few more pecans. (This is turning into the Festival of Pecans. Why am I craving them so?) If I get tired of cooking, I'll skip the squash salad and prep some green beans to be served just tender, with lemon.

That leaves a manageable day tomorrow: pie fillings will need to be mixed up in the morning, potatoes will need to be peeled and cubed and left in cold water. The turkey will go in late in the morning, and I think the only last-minute jobs will be mashing the potatoes and making the gravy. I think. Pies can go into the oven when we sit down for dinner, and at the same time we'll pop a bowl and beaters into the freezer for the whipped cream.

We are hosting a pair of Brazilian exchange students, and I expect they will find the meal rather bizarre. But it's the Thanksgiving dinner I love, the one that tastes like home and tradition (not to mention butter). I hope you have a lovely day tomorrow, wherever it takes you and whatever is on the table.

Comments

[Amy F]

Happy Thanksgiving CJ!

Explain more about rolling out the pastry dough the day before -- I have never-ending trouble with shrinking pie crusts, but haven't heard to do them the day before.

[mary]

mmmmm, butter. Everything's better with butter. Lots and lots of butter. It all sounds fantastic.

Happy Thanksgiving to the Gladly family!

[Tracy]

Happy Thanksgiving, CJ!

[Becky]

Happy Thanksgiving. I can't get my girls out of the kitchen for anything! Many happy days ahead if your daughter is the same.

Hurry back!

[CJ]

Gosh, Amy, I'm not certain about the food chemistry but I think that letting it rest between rolling and baking allows the gluten to relax. I don't think it has to be a day-before kind of thing -- I think even 30 minutes between rolling and baking would help. Let me know if you try it and if it works.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

[Pigwotflies]

Mmmmmmmmmmm! Yummy!

Happy Thanksgiving.

[Lilian]

HAAAA!!! Brazilian exchange students! How did they like the meal? I'm way too curious to know. I loved my first "real" thanksgiving, but I had already been here in the US for 3 years. It's my favorite holiday, and the food is the "favoritest" part :-)

[magpie]

Butter is the key to everything.