Thanksgiving Dinner's On!

Aldistar -- Four hours is a long time to be worrying. I sure hope all goes well. This is a hard time of year to be having family members sick or in the hospital.

I was wrong about your Watergate salad. I was thinking it was a play on the name of the Watergate apartments and the Waldorf-Astoria hotel! When I checked online, I found several recipes... here's one.

This Waldorf Salad used to be one of my mom's favorites and a frequent part of my childhood Thanksgiving Dinners:



We always added the walnuts.

The community dinner is the very best way to celebrate Thanksgiving, I think. I hope your stuffing turns out well. Is it fancy or plain?

I'm interested in your high heat method. I cook my bird at 450 for the first 15 minutes, then turn the heat down to 350. Some people are shocked but that's the way I was taught (ala Joy of Cooking).

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. Don't let her change the chipotle idea, littlek. I loved it!

Here's an article about the circuitous route that the turkey took from Mexico to our tables.

http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/turkey.htm

Well, for happy family people it must be hard to imagine being alone, not only but not least because you have built up thick tradition.

My happiest memories of thanksgivings past are of my ex and I walking on the beach while the turkey was not-burning-the-house-down (the low number of times we got to be hosts). Not alone, but not the whole hazzerai.

I don't mind being alone on Tday, have been once in a while in various decades. I don't feel unloved as I have some people who do love me. It's a kind of free day, when I don't feel like I should be washing curtains, whatever: kind of a renewal day, walks and coming home to favorite music.

I usually have people over or go to other friends' places, up here in my sort of isolated north, but I don't hate it if I don't, it's more contempletive and, frankly, restorative.

I guess I am not very date and ritual oriented. When I see family it might not be an official holiday, but good for us all in its ordinary time.

Piffka, I don't have much choice in the matter. No one will accept her staying at home, so we will prolly have to drop the chipotle, the cubes of butternut in the stuffing, the wilted spinach........

That link is great!

Um, how about with and without stuffings... like make her a side dish that doesn't go in the bird.

Your place, your dinner.. (says the meanie, who used to bring things considered weird to my family dinners, and now they as a group are much more adventurous.. if only in making variations within the meal).

Doesn't turkey NEED chipotle? (or are you making a t'key?)

This reminds me, has anyone seen the cover of this week's New Yorker? A rooster with an icepack on his head as he starts to cross the road to where the people are..
very touching, to me.

Osso - my family all have their own peculiar food issues. Dad and mom are on heart-healthy diets, bro loves rich and flavorful, I like weird, sis likes tuscan style..... (lil sis is not-quite-done-with-being-anorexic, but she won't be here).

The aim of any family dinner is to find a simple meal which speaks to the common denomenator. Adding extra dishes might not be a welcome idea. We'll probably compromise with her getting her way across the board. I'll keep you posted.

Thanks!

That's not a compromise... that a capitulation, darn it! Well, you and your family gotta do what you gotta do. I'm sure that the positive aspects of being together will outweigh these personal differences. I am such a bossy bitch that I cannot imagine any sister of mine telling me I ought not to make what I wanted. Hah. If one of them complained, they'd get "the look" and they all fear "the look."

Traditions are good, no doubt about it, but so are innovations. I like them both. I have recipes I've grown to love but I'd never insist on them for others nor on any specific foods. It is, after all, just one meal. I still laugh regularly at my brother who "must" have creamed corn. (He was always like that, even as a little kid!)


Ossobuco -- I hope I didn't offend you with my waxing rhapsodic over people getting together for the holidays. It was an astounding revelation to me when I realized one year how pleasant it could be with just the four of us having a thanksgiving meal together instead of the twenty-five or so that we've sometimes had crowd the table. With fewer people everything seems so much easier. We kept the schedule we wanted. We still dressed for dinner, still made the table looks as fancy as possible but it was even more special because it was just for us. I imagine that same attitude would continue if it were just one person. It is the person who wants to be a part of something bigger that is the one I am concerned with -- and for anyone like that, the solution Farmerman suggests seems perfect. Whenever you help someone, there's a tendency to forget your own troubles.

Osso, I have spent a few traditionally family oriented holidays without family. I've had mixed reactions. One year, the first outside of new england, even my housemates were away. That was pretty depressing, doubly so because it was my dirthday as well. And I didn't have any pets then. But, as the away-from-family holidays happened again and again, I started to like them more and more. Not that I prefer to be away from my family more than being with my family (Hmmm...), but I find it less depressing the more I do it. Then again, I'm a person who made a decision to head 'back home' to be near my family. I could wax on..... Oh, and I don't get the cover of which you speak.

piffka - My big sis is a bit of a queen bee. She is the first born in my family, but even more, she was the first grandchild on either side of my parents' families. We aren't stick to our guns traditionalists when it comes to food - none of us are. We're all just a little picky in different ways.

<the cover is about the bird's point of view about bird flu...>

Oh, and piffka, I'm not at all offended - just conversing.

Hmmmm.....he's sick, he's headed to the people.... sad for the rooster?

Wellll, he may get run over crossing the road...
piquant drawing.

I do think the vast deaths of zillions of chickens to ward off contagion is distressing, however warranted. Oh, I know they die anyway.

Ah yes, the other selfish gene.

I have an interesting link on all this, but that's a tangent. I'll post it in some flu-ey thread one of these days.

let me know if you do?

Oh, please... since when have I ever minded a tangent! <grin>

We're talking about poultry and such. It's just a hop and skip to the bird flu... so post away.

Oh, I do hope I get an invite to your scrumptious dinner, Piffka! <hint, hint> :wink:

Piffka- My stuffing is a version of chestnut stuffing. It takes 2 bushels of chestnuts and about a bathtub of bread cubes (which we will start making next weeK). Its got onions potatoes celery, about 50 lb of cornbread, lots of sage and pepper, and its all mixed and baked in about 25 pans (institutional sized). The bread stuffing kitchen is at the Presbyterian church community kitchen, and we will do 3 "bakes".