(no subject)

[fan_eunice]

A random Thanksgiving type question, on account of this popped up as a point of contention during the holiday.

Do you eat your turkey with cranberry sauce on Thanksgiving? If so, which do you want on the table?

a) the jellied kind that retains the shape of the can
b) the fancier but still comes in a can with berries and stuff
c) homemade

Now, I know this makes me a culinary heathen...but, for me it's gotta be a. Gotta be. On any other day of the year I would balk at a can shaped jelly thing staring at me. But on Thanksgiving, I don't actually care which would taste better because TRADITION. It's just not T-day unless I can identify the ridges of the can in my cranberry sauce.

See also: sweet potato casserole MUST have marshmallows on it (and I already know some of you are grossed out by that, just know that I am judging you right back)

Alternately, what food traditions are must haves at your holiday table (any holiday at all if Thanksgiving is not applicable to you)?

Also, also. I made PIE. It was really good. No, really...please do not judge my pie by my cranberry sauce and marshmallow preferences. This was an objectively tasty pie.

Comments

[klia]

I've had to become really open to new things since moving away from my family, because a lot depends on who I end up eating with, and what traditions/food prefs they have. The thing I really miss is bread stuffing with sage and pork sausage. No one I've shared a table with makes it (they do wild rice stuffing, which just isn't the same).

I think I've had sweet potato casserole once. I was not a fan, with or without marshmallows. But I love all kinds of cranberry sauce -- I'll eat it pretty much any way. A friend makes homemade cranberry sauce with oranges that's amazing. I got leftovers, and have been eating it with everything.

I made my favorite pumpkin pie -- my grandmother's recipe. My whole family disliked cloves, so it doesn't have any. OMG, PIE. YUM.

[fan_eunice]

I think sweet potato casserole is one of those things that there is a window on acquiring a taste for, and it closes by ten years old. But once you have it, you have it for life :D

I feel ya on missing the family traditional foods. My mother makes these yeast rolls that are a recipe handed down from her mother handed down from her mother and so on, and every year that I've had thanksgiving elsewhere I have felt their absence keenly. Now that I'm baking again I have the recipe on hand so I never have to go without again, but it's not quite the same if I make them :)

[chagrined]

I enjoy all types of cranberry sauce but I'll admit I'm partial to a, especially on thxgiving.

There are various things that ppl in my family are ~known~ for making, so those become traditions, basically. Otherwise I would say the biggest holiday tradition is PLAYING PINOCHLE.

This year I made this except with cranberries instead of golden raisins. It was my first time making it and it was well-received!

[fan_eunice]

Yay, canned cranberry sauce! I'm kind of in awe that you can get everyone to play cards, though. Round my house pretty much everyone simply collapses in front of the football games the second the fork sets down. Except me, 'cause I don't like football so I retreat to a corner with my laptop :)

That rice looks yummy!

[twtd]

The canned stuff. Definitely the canned stuff.

My dad had a heart shaped ceramic dish that he'd serve the sweet potato casserole in, and he'd cover half of the heart in marshmallows and leave the other half plain because it was always a toss up as to whether I'd eat the marshmallows or think that they were the grossest thing ever. He covered his bases. Plus, it looked cool.

[fan_eunice]

Ooooooh, that sounds like it looks cool. I would totally accept that as a marshmallow compromise.

[arduinna]

Canned with ridges, all the way. At this point I'm basically the only one who still eats it, but it's a necessary part of Thanksgiving for me. If need be, I'll chill and bring my own can, and schloop it out onto a plate when I get wherever I'm going that year while every else eats the real-berry stuff.

I always make an apple pie, from a recipe I copied from somewhere decades ago - some newspaper or magazine. I use store-bought dough (much, much safer - it actually looks and tastes like pie dough that way), but the rest is me, and it comes out great.

My aunt always makes raisin pie for my dad, who grew up with it. For years, he was the only one who ate it (and he was stoked - he'd freeze the leftover pie till xmas to have some then, then have a slice every Sunday till it was gone), then his sister started coming to Tday and would have some, then a cousin tried it and liked it, then my sil tried it and liked it... Now my aunt makes one raisin pie for Thanksgiving and a second for Xmas. *g*

[fan_eunice]

Yeah, I totally didn't make my own pie crust. I tried that once about ten years ago. It did not go well. However I have been told the secret is to use vodka (in the dough, not drinking it..though making pie crusts also requires doing shots if you ask me), so I may try it again. The filling part from scratch bit is awesomely easy (and tasty!), though. :)

[serrico]

My cranberry sauce preference is c. I...don't think I've ever had the kind that retains its can shape? I wouldn't say no to a taste test, though, because anything cranberry-flavoured makes me happy.

I'm not entirely certain what constitutes sweet potato *casserole*, but if it's anything like mashing up a bunch of sweet potatoes with brown sugar and baking the resultant mush under the broiler, then I AM WITH YOU ON THE NECESSITY OF MARSHMALLOWS. Caramelized on top of the mush. Yes.

...my Thanksgiving was a month and a half ago, and my next opportunity for this yumminess isn't 'til Christmas. Darn you and your food post! *shakyfist*

[fan_eunice]

It's definitely cranberry flavored? :D

And YES that is what I am referring to. Crispy gooey marshmallows, sweet potato mush underneath.

[sapote]

We have a can each of A and B, actually. When I was a small child we were allowed very few processed foods and so something as staggeringly high-tech as cranberries shaped like a can was a real treat. I am genuinely interested in C someday. But not on Thanksgiving.

[fan_eunice]

Hee, exactly! I've had some amaaaaaaazing homemade cranberry sauce. Just not on that ONE DAY where it must be can shaped :D

Our Thanksgiving menu

[dorothy1901]

Homemade cranberry sauce, definitely. Homemade applesauce, too. However, nothing with sweet potatoes or yams or marshmallows or squash or pumpkin touches the table.

Let's see: Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, applesauce, cranberry sauce, green beans (steamed, not in casserole), sautéed mushrooms, biscuits, butter, pickles, olives, tomato and cucumber. For dessert: Grapes, pineapple, apple pie, pecan pie, vanilla ice cream. Our menu has changed very little in the past few decades. Sometimes we add chocolate.

Our must-have Thanksgiving tradition isn't culinary; it's listening to "Alice's Restaurant" on the radio at noon, while I'm putting the turkey into the oven. One year when we were away from home at Thanksgiving, I brought a cassette version along so we could keep to our tradition.

I applaud your pie.

Re: Our Thanksgiving menu

[fan_eunice]

...but...but...no pumpkin pie? *cries*

[cereta]

D. Bought at a deli counter. Specifically, the deli counter at Krogers. It has lots of cherries in it.

[fan_eunice]

I think that sort of counts as homemade, 'cause they probably make it on site. :D

[green]

this year we had the canned ridged kind and our sweet potato casserole had marshmallows melted on top.

but my favorite traditional thanksgiving food is creamed pearl onions. \o/

[fan_eunice]

YAY!!! Y'all are making me feel so much better about my love of can shaped jelly food.

[nonelvis]

The stuff in the can makes me laugh. (Sorry.) I'll eat it, because it still tastes good, but I'm definitely in the c) category. Usually I make a spiced cranberry sauce with star anise and cinnamon; this year, it was a new recipe from Cook's Illustrated that used fresh and crystallized ginger. It was pretty good, and the important thing is that there were plenty of leftovers for post-Thanksgiving stuffing/gravy/cranberry sauce meals.

The only food tradition we absolutely have to have at Thanksgiving is cornbread dressing, which my husband insists upon. I grew up with the bread dressing, but have long since switched loyalties to the cornbread kind; I make it using the Cook's technique of soaking it overnight in half-and-half and chicken broth (if I'm doing a non-vegetarian version), or soy milk and veggie broth if I'm having vegans over for the holiday. You get a super-moist dressing this way.

I also always feel a little weird if there isn't something pumpkiny for dessert. It doesn't have to be pumpkin pie (which I love); pumpkin cheesecake, pumpkin brownies, etc., are fine, too. It's all good as long as there's pumpkin.

[fan_eunice]

It makes me laugh too, that's part of it's charm! That it makes that weird plopping sound as it comes out of the can and it's just ridiculous looking. BUT PERFECT.

Mmmmm, someday I would love to try your cranberry sauce, it sounds DELICIOUS. Just not on Thanksgiving. :D

[rensreality101]

My mom-in-law makes the sweet potato casserole topped with half marshmallows and half pecans. It is the only way to avoid full-on war at the holiday table. While I prefer the berry kind, for Thanksgiving I agree with you - it must be the jellied monstrosity with can lines so you know where to slice it. ;)

My moms side of the family will often have spagetti or pinto beans in addition to the regular Thanksgiving meal items. I have no clue why.

[fan_eunice]

Hee, yes...it sounds like half-and-half is the way to go to avoid marshmallow wars when there is a conflict. :)

[franzeska]

Hee!

I think we usually had homemade when I was little when we had it at all. My mother tends to go in for Theme and Concept holidays, so in her Santa Fe phase, we had a lot of black beans and things out of the Coyote Cafe cookbook. We didn't always have turkey, and we never had marshmallows on anything. Most years, my mom and stepdad end up going to the house of a friend of theirs who runs an Italian restaurant and always makes lasagna for Thanksgiving.

[fan_eunice]

Mmmmm....lasagne. Though it would be weird for me to have anything but turkey. I don't really do holidays in general, but thanksgiving dinner doesn't really count 'cause it's mostly just piles and piles of awesome food.

[montanaharper]

Option A: canberry! It's a holiday necessity in my family.

Thanksgiving tradition when I was growing up varied drastically, depending on where we were living. When we were in the same state as my grandparents, it was a full-on t-day dinner with turkey, a dozen different sides, canberry, and three or four different homemade pies. When it was just me and my mom and dad living fifteen hundred miles away from the grandparents, it was turkey frozen dinners eaten while watching Young Frankenstein. (Don't ask, okay? I have no idea how it got started; it just did. *g*) Both of them are traditions I cherish.

As an adult, I've done everything from the t-day feast for 35 people (zomg, that was insane; what was I thinking?!), to a roasted chicken with a small selection of trimmings for just me and the kids, to the frozen dinner approach, depending on what was going on in my life at the time.