Rating: 💋 💋 💋 😘
Happy Thanksgiving, my friends!
As a food blogger, it would stand to reason that Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays, if not my most favorite. A celebration plus food? What could be wrong with that?
Shock of all shocks, Thanksgiving is actually my least favorite major holiday.
I know. How? Why? What is wrong with me?
Well, let me explain.
My Dad claims he likes Thanksgiving because there is less fanfare and no stress about gift-giving. You stay at home and have a nice meal with your family. Sweet deal. I agree that from that point of view, it's a great time. My brother says he loves Thanksgiving because you are allowed, and even expected, to eat a crazy ton of food. It's awesome!
For him.
For me, therein lies the issue.
I love eating. I do not love eating so much that I cannot move and my stomach is cramping it is so full. Where is the joy in that? What's more, all the ladies in my family agree, the food is not worth it. Give me a plate of pasta primavera and yeah, I'll run the risk of stuffing myself for the sheer joy of the taste. Mashed potatoes and root vegetables?...Nah. In effect, this makes the whole holiday kind of pointless to me.
Pair that with the fact that Thanksgiving is very tightly connected to football and it is just not good vibes. I come from a die-hard Eagles family, and the Eagles were not really that great when I was a child (or this current season...donneven talk to me about it, I am so disappointed in them rn I cannot speak)...you get the gist, not fun memories growing up listening to the adults in my family yell at Andy Reid through the TV. The vibe associations are more negative than positive. Whole holiday wasted.
HOWEVER, my parents are still great cooks. The holiday gets three stars overall because of the holiday. For what they had to work with, my parent's cooking was well above three stars.
For starters, look at these beautiful cocktails my Mom made! Cocktail hour was at three o'clock, and every year, without fail, my Mom "surprises" us with a signature drink. The surprise is what the drink will be, but the fact that the signature cocktail exists is very typical of the woman who calls herself a "Domestic Goddess" on LinkedIn. A few years ago, we had cranberry bellini, and that was pretty good, but this year's was a real star. It was a simple blend of apple cider and champagne, with a twist of orange and a cinnamon sugar rim. It was refreshing, slightly sweet, and bubbly. I'm in love. After my first, I started making mine without the citrus and I found it just as good, but I know my Mom and sister were raving about it, so that, as well as the champagne to cider ratio, can definitely be adjusted according to taste. I was crazy about the cinnamon sugar though. It was easy to do (wet the edge of the glass with water and press into a pile of the sugar mixture), looked fancy, and tasted delicious. Big fan.
Like the signature cocktail, I would like us to appreciate the center pieces my Mom made, with a cranberry base, ginormous cinnamon sticks, and candles. She's a great hostess. It makes the table look pretty and gives my brother something to tease about - we stan a good conversation starter.
For the past two years, my Mom has asked each us which Thanksgiving menu item is our favorite, and we all pick something, and that is how she decides what to cook. It is intended to reduce excess food and please the crowd at the same time, from what I understand. Inevitably, no one mentions some "essential" dish, like stuffing, but we just cannot have Thanksgiving dinner without whatever forgotten essential it is, so that gets slapped on the list as well.
Pictured above we have, clockwise: my Mom's gorgeous center pieces, cranberry sauce; cinnamon apple sauce; turkey marinated in sage, pepper, and salt, then roasted in freshly chopped sage, butter, and intermittently doused with apple cider and pan juices throughout roasting; parsley-roasted carrots; mashed potatoes; and Caribbean cornbread; which is in the center because it is the best part of dinner, hands down.
Not pictured, we also had: roasted Brussels sprouts, steamed broccoli, greens with champagne vinaigrette, and stuffing. So it was not a ridiculous amount of food...but it was a lot more than your standard protein-carb-veg dinner.
I ate everything except the mashed potatoes and Brussels sprouts. Mashed potatoes are, like, maybe okay, but I'd rather have a potato pretty much any other way. Roast it, fry it, bake it, but if you are gonna mash it you better make sure there are absolutely zero chunks. I will not waver on that. Plus, I really prefer garlic mashed potatoes if I'm gonna have them. These weren't garlic, but they were lump-free, so I considered them. At the end of the day, I just couldn't figure out how to squeeze them onto my plate without disrupting the ecosystem, and I did not want them that badly to go in for seconds.
Brussels sprouts are a different story. I just won't eat them and no one in my family will. Except, that is, my Dad, who requests them every year. Sigh. He used to make us all try at least one, but we've gotten pretty good at squirming out of it. I mean, they taste like a garbage can exploding in your mouth. What is the deal??
As for what I did eat, it was pretty darn good. I am not a turkey-hater, unlike most of Twitter, it would seem, and, if my loving description is any proof, my Mom knows how to cook a turkey to make it worthwhile. Subtle but savory, it was a very good centerpiece for the meal. Going around the plate, we have the apple sauce next, which is served hot and spiced from the cinnamon. We look forward to it every year. The broccoli and green salad were actually my request this year, because I wanted to make sure there was something fresh to cut all the other creamy dishes, and they did the job well. Broccoli is probably my favorite vegetable of all time, and I really enjoyed alternating bites of the other dishes with salad. They were simple dishes, but they were needed. As for the carrots, I have to say, they are not a vegetable I am very crazy about. I love sweet things, but not when it comes to carrots? Meh. And yet, I saw these carrots with their delicious roast marks, and I just could not resist. Two were enough for me, but man, roasted is now my first choice in cooking carrots, and the parsley did a fantastic job at tampering the sugars in the carrots. When it comes to stuffing, I have to say it amazes me at how non-photogenic one dish can be. I looked at the blob on my plate and my first thought was, "A French chef would never." Nope, stuffing is truly an American dish. I kind of appreciate it for its sneakiness though. Like, "hey, you're gonna eat bread, but you're gonna disguise it by making it hot and mushy, and then you're gonna trick yourself into thinking it's healthy by mixing in a bunch of vegetables like celery, carrots, and mushrooms". As it turns out, the mushy vegetable bread tastes really freaking good and I had a great time eating it. I think the secret is in the quality of the stock that mixes it all together. Last but certainly not least, we have the cranberry sauce. It's cool and tart, making it the perfect dish to offset all the other thick, creamy, sweet dishes. The best part is dragging pieces of turkey through the juice it leaves behind. Mm mmm. On the side, we have the cornbread, which I always save for last because oh my God. My mom puts pineapple in it, and I don't like pineapple itself, but this is fabulous. It doesn't flavor the cornbread, but makes it so perfectly moist and sweet and I would eat a whole tray of cornbread if I could.
At this point in time, I would just like to note that my Mom made everything homemade. She mashed those potatoes and apples, basted that turkey, chopped those veggies, baked that bread, rolled that pie crust, and crockpotted that stuffing. Go Mom! You're seeing where the Domestic Goddess thing comes in now.
This is a picture of my Dad and his plate because it was by far the most gorgeous plate on the table, and he tried every single dish. I'd like to thank him for modeling it for me.
Next up, dessert!
We did take an hour or so to breathe and stretch and recuperate. Then it was go time.
I am sad to say that this year we missed out on the pumpkin pie, which I love, but only my Mom and I eat it and we already had two other pies. How many pies do six people need? I love Shoo Fly pie anyway, so it was not a huge loss. My Dad loves the apple crumb pie, which always looks so good and smells heavenly. I like apple pie okay, but I sometimes have a bit of a quibble with the texture of the apples once they're baked in the crust, so I usually opt out. That does not leave me out in the cold, because Shannon and I campaigned for Shoo Fly pie. Now usually when I say Shoo Fly, people look at me like I am crazy, so let me explain: Shoo Fly pie is a Pennsylvania Dutch dish (my Mom's family hails from Lancaster Co, PA) that basically consists of a primarily molasses-based mixture that is poured into a pie crust and baked. Ohh yeahhh. Nothing goes better with sugar than sugar. It was moist and cinnamony and heavenly.
When my Mom was making my Dad's plate of apple pie, she asked, "Would you like vanilla ice cream or whipped cream?" and he responded, "Um...yes." When I made my plate, I followed suit, and dressed my pie with a scoop of ice cream and a dollop of whipped cream. I never said I wasn't at least a bit of a glutton. And yes, they were both homemade.
Perfection.
Also, my family insisted I take a photo of my plate after dinner so I could confess to you that I have a bit of a problem. As in, I clean my plate very very well, every single time I eat. I'm not sure what that says about me, but I know my Dad likes to tease me and point it out to waiters. I swear I am not lying, either. This photo was taken after dinner, before dishes. So...yeah. Clean Plate Ranger award goes to me.
Anyway.
I am thankful for my lovely family, I am thankful for my friends, and I am thankful to you, my lovely readers, for feeding me, putting up with me taking model shots of my meals, and supporting my blog. It means a lot. You are all awesome people and I feel pretty crazy lucky to find myself surrounded by you.
I'm off to reheat some turkey for dinner. Happy leftover week!
XX,
MK
Comments