Next week our family will be gathering around an improvised table at a rented lake house, ready to share another Thanksgiving meal. Our cooks and bakers have varying levels of experience and expertise, as our ages range from 4 to 74. Thanksgiving is a forgiving meal. There are reliable dishes no matter the skill set or what disasters may happen in the kitchen. And there will be a few bottles of Beaujolais Nouveau which can sparkle over any surface flaws.
Gravy and the mashed potatoes, are always tasty window dressing and camouflage. We can pile mounds of potatoes decoratively, and pour lashings of warm, cosmetic gravy. We will have the annual debate about dressing or stuffing; we do not stuff the turkey’s cavity with a tasty and aromatic combination of bread, celery and pecans, yet we still call our heaping casserole dish of steaming, bread-y goodness – stuffing. You do what your family dictates. And later on we can all meet in the kitchen for pilgrim sandwiches.
Here it is, just a week before Thanksgiving and the family has not yet voted on the dinner rolls. Growing up, we had Pepperidge Farm Parker House rolls for ceremonial dinners. When we moved to North Carolina, those same Parker House rolls were an acceptable substitute for homemade biscuits when serving warm ham biscuits, with a mild spicy brown mustard, thin slices of onion, and a sliver of Swiss cheese. Yumsters. Or should we bake Pillsbury Crescent rolls? We do have 2 ovens in the rental house, so we should cook, and bake, at full capacity. Carbs are us, after all. I could also consider baking some homemade yeast rolls, but I have a couple of crafts I want to make with the younger folks. I might just delegate the baking.
Though I will probably whip up a batch of corn bread to go with the vat o’chili we are bringing with us for on our first supper at the lake house, and it will be the basis of our stuffing-slash-dressing. That is easy, unglamorous home baking. Happily, I can easily bake it since it does not require yeast or kneading or ingredient weighing. And it is something we can cheerfully eat at breakfast, lunch and dinner. Every day. We go through mountains of cornbread when whenever we gather, which validates my time spent in the kitchen.
Here is the Mark Bittman’s recipe for cornbread – the easiest recipe of all – leaving me time to get back to planning the crafty pinecone-turkey place cards and the hand-printed turkey wreaths. Mark Bittman’s Corn Bread
Our little house is in the smack in the middle of a pecan orchard, and there a bumper pecan crop this year. Consequently, the squirrels are having a drunken convention in our back yard. There are thundering squirrel hooves tearing across the roof all day, as they leap from tree to roof, to another tree, with balletic abandon. Squirrelly boys scoff at the pedestrian rations in the bird feeder. This might be the perfect year for us to learn to harvest some home-grown pecans, before the wretched rodents bury every one.
Here is the Food & Wine recipe for cornbread stuffing that we will use this year: Food & Wine Dressing Corn Bread and Pecan Dressing
Instead of roasting the turkey, as usual, this year we are going to try spatchcocking it. We have only tried this method once before, but we have acquired a couple of dark meat eaters, and we don’t want to overcook their portions. I can’t watch that spatchcocking process, it looks too painful, so I might organize a walk around the lake with my fellow crafters.
And that purple sweet potato pie? Our social media influencer’s targeted audience will be chattering about it all afternoon. The vivid purple, the color of ripe beauty berries, is meant for Instagram, more than the uniform green bean casserole, the beige turkey, or my blandly unoriginal orange pumpkin pie. Purple Sweet Potato Pie https://www.eatingwell.com/recipe/268752/purple-sweet-potato-pie/
Have a picture perfect Thanksgiving. Cook with abandon. Gobble, gobble!
“To each other, we were as normal and nice as the smell of bread. We were just a family. In a family even exaggerations make perfect sense.”
–John Irving
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