Thanksgiving Menu

2013 Menu

The Thanksgiving Menu is always a series of compromises with tradition, individual tastes, and time, energy and money all playing a role.  I've spent a lot of time with the grocery ads, poring over cookbooks and recipes, making lists and trying to take everybody's food idiosyncrasies into consideration.  Here is the menu for for Thanksgiving.

This is good for a group which contains both vegetarians and meat eaers, as only the turkey and gravy have meat.

The pecan pie bars are to die for.  

This morning's Boston Globe announced that nuts are very good for you.  Now the pecan pie bars are health food.  The wild rice salad has nuts, too. Yippee! 

Chez Grapeshot

Finalizing the Thanksgiving dinner en famille, with a new daughter-in-law this year (yay!) and both sons nearby.  What a reason to be thankful.  Granddaughter will be with us, too.  I believe this is the first ever celebration with all together in New England.

There will be a roast turkey, of course, and some stuffing, my mom's old recipe to comply with vegetarian tastes. 
 Earla's Old Time Potato Stuffing
We'll enjoy gravy, like my Dad taught me to make.  Thanks, Dad.  Not too many people know how to make real gravy anymore.  Equal quantities of fat and flour and not more than your turkey broth can accommodate.  Mashed potatoes.  Trying some squash fritters for the vegetarian.  Made with rice, too, they sound yummy.  A wild rice salad with cranberries, also good for the vegetarian and it sounds tasty.  Maybe some green bean casserole made from scratch.  And Ina Garten's cranberry conserve.  Dessert will be pumpkin  tarts and pecan pie bars. A veritable feast, so be sure, and plenty of work, too. 
 Some of the tasks can be done in advance:   the turkey broth, the stuffing bread, cut up the veggies, cook the squash, cook the beans and rice, make the salad, Make the tart shells and the pecan pie bars.  Enough left for turkey day, plus I'll have some help.  The worst is cleaning up the kitchen and trying to find a place for all the leftovers.  Thanks, too, for the fridge in the basement storeroom.  And the cold garage.

The cats will be thankful for lots of extra laps to sit in.  Share the love, they always say.

Back to my writing, which is nearly 80,000 words in the 1928 Southern California book.  Yowza!

From the First Thanksgiving and Onward

Pumpkin Cheesecake  Yum!

The first Thanksgiving: not the Pilgrim Fathers, but mine as a young bride.  We had to buy a card table because we lived in a tiny apartment with a living room (no table)  a small bedroom and a kitchen the size of a closet.  We had only returned from our honeymoon a month before.  I was making my first forays into the kitchen.  I knew meatloaf, pork chops and spaghetti.  We bought a German magazine in Mexico with recipes, and also a Gourmet Magazine.  I was learning German, so the German one was cool. I still have its recipe for lentil soup.  The Gourmet, of course, was in English, an old summer issue, and from that I clipped and still make the gazpacho recipe.  It's a classic.

But on to that early Thanksgiving.  I had my mom's stuffing recipe (2nd best in the world, which I have somehow lost, damn it) and my courage.  We invited a local colleague of Significant Other, who reneged at the last minute because "fowl sits heavy on my stomach."  So it was S.O. and me and a turkey with the trimmings.  Of course the card table couldn 't hold all the trimmings, and I had to keep running back to the kitchen.  I have no idea if I opened cans of cranberries and sweet potatoes (probably) and just did the turkey and dressing. By the way, the stuffing had mashed potatoes as an ingredient.  And celery and bread.  Poultry seasoning.

My father taught me how to make gravy.  Equal parts flour and fat and good pan drippings.  A fat separator is a useful tool.  The  quality of the gravy is equal to what's in the bottom of the pan.  This should be engraved on every cook's forehead.

We're had many thanksgivings, and the best ones were when we had a collection of friends, family and strangers around the table.  Never enough family for fights.  My mom and her brothers always got into it over politics.

The colleague who spurned our invitation was seen on another occasion at the lunch counter of the St. Louis airport, dressed in coat and tie,  eating pizza with knife and fork in good (then) German fashion. This man personified weird. 

I learned to make Boeuf Bourgignon and other toothsome meals in that itsy-bitsy kitchen.  I learned the difference between a clove and a bud of garlic, and once a baked potato exploded and burned me royally.  My future kitchens were bigger and brighter and I learned more about cooking and cuisine as the years went on.  We moved to Chicago and ventured into many fine restaurants. 

A cook never stops learning.  And that is a good thing.

Thanksgiving "Sides"

I had issues trying to find a vegetable casserole to bring our host for Thanksgiving. All the recipes seemed to be rife with cream, cheese, and a can of mushroom soup. I love cream and cheese as much as the next person, but with mashed potatoes, gravy AND stuffing, you can go a little overboard. I want to try one of the lower-cal broccoli recipes at home first. Wasn't sure if it was take-worthy. I have a a Brussels sprouts recipe with craisins and mustard, but need to try out that one too. Many people are not fond of Brussels sprouts. My children, for example.

What I decided to cook is a made-from-scratch green bean casserole. Fresh beans, fresh mushooms, a home-made white sauce and then, well-not-quite-from scratch, the Durkee Onions. Very little cream. Hard to beat the onions. Roche Brothers had nice-looking green beans for 99 cents a pound.

For a dessert I'm taking something called a pear/cranberry butter crunch. Sounds like a winner.
At least it's got fruit.

Tonight we're experimenting with two different varieties of squash and a new recipe. Also making chicken that calls for fresh sage. I have a SAGE bush, in spite of the fact that I divided it in the spring.

I have some great holiday recipes and more to try. Used to make orange shells stuffed with sweet potatoes, but that would get a little pricey with oranges a buck apiece. The supermarket no longer carried Mrs. Paul's frozen sweet potatoes. No frozen sweet potatoes, in fact. WTF?

Well, this is New England where everyone likes center entrance colonials, flour tortillas and squash. Whatchagonna do? On Saturday, I'll pick up some squash at the prepped food counter. They do a good job on it. Butter, anyone?

I found a recipe for stuffed escarole. Sound rather intriguing. We finished up the goulash soup last night. After sitting for two days, it was perfecto-garcia. My "secret" is 1 teaspoon of sweet paprika, one of hot and one of smoked. We're a paprika friendly household. And always a teaspoon of caraway seed.

The people at the banquet last Saturday who thought the carrot soup too spicey would have howled in pain when they tasted my goulash soup. Again, spicey seems to be a condition a lot of New Englanders can't tolerate. The home of the bean and the cod, both somewhat bland. Clam chowder anyone? I love a meal where you keep the Kleenex on the table and a pitcher of water at hand. Ole!

Regional differences still abound. Someone referred to the airy spaces of a local hotel as a "fishbowl." Aha! Thought I. Another New Englander who likes small windows, chopped up dark rooms and Cape Cod style houses. We are the only house in our neighborhood who popped out the faux window dividers. Now instead of 6 panes, we have one. I love modern architecture. Living in the wrong area. Even living in the wrong century.

Enough New England bashing. After all, I have the slough, the Scottish Highland Cattle, a lot of neighborhood "burying grounds," and Old Ironsides. Whale watches. Newport. There's a lot to like. Happy Thanksgiving.

Adieu, Gourmet, and Thanksgiving from Scratch

My home-made cookbook has, typed on a portable Royal, my first Gourmet recipe, for Gazpacho.
Combine in the container of a blender, 5 very ripe tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped, 1 cucumber peeled and chopped, 1 green papper, seeded and chopped, 1 onion, chopped, 1 tablespoon finely chopped parsley, and 1 garlic clove, crushed.

Cover the container and blend untl the mixture is almost smooth. Stir in 1 1/4 cups tomato juice, 3 T. olive oil, 2 T. vinegar, 1/4 t. paprika, sale and pepper to taste, and chill the soup thoroughly.

Serve the gaspacho individual, chilled soup bowls. With the soup one may serve several dishes of tomatoes, green pepper, cucumber, and red onion, all peeled, seeded if necessary and appropriately diced.

July Gourmet, 1964 . I have a note: "try adding a bit of chopped raw spinach." I'm sure we served the soup in those elegant little glass bowls that fit into a bed of chopped ice, originally intended for shrimp cocktail, but also great for vichysoisse. See photo, from EBAY. I had to key "vintage" to find them. Obviously passe along with Gourmet and the coat and tie. Adieu gracious living. Adieu Gourmet.

I still use this recipe, although to this day I've never served little bowls of chopped anything with it Maybe a few croutons.

Some years later, my friend Karin and I cooked Thanksgiving Dinner from Gourmet. Part of the dinner involved roasting chestnuts in a very hot oven and peeled them while they were still hot. My hands looked like holy shit afterward, and that was my first, last, and I guarantee, only time my hands will EVER touch a raw chestnut.

Below is an account of the event from my Toastmaster's speech recording the festivities.

Thanksgiving from Scratch ©

I have cooked over 35 Thanksgiving dinners, including one in Germany. The first one sat on an overflowing card table a month after our wedding. This year, alone again, we’ll have a turkey breast, with sides. The traditional Thanksgiving meal holds no trauma or terrors. It wasn’t always so.

I was five months pregnant and we drove to Houston to be with old friends Jim and Karin for Thanksgiving. When we arrived, Karin announced that we were going to cook the GOURMET MAGAZINE THANKSGIVING DINNER. From scratch.

Cooking From scratch? What does that mean? My grandma didn’t know of any other way. From scratch? From the very beginning. Using raw materials.

Our menu began with pumpkin soup and ended with a grand finale of crème brulèe. In between came turkey with chestnut stuffing. Mashed potatoes, gravy, veggies and an extra special cranberry sauce. It sounded a little intimidating, but we were sure two cooks could carry it off.

We got going early, around 8:00 a.m., planning a 5:00 o’clock dinner. That seemed a bit optimistic.

Husbands and kids were shooed out of the kitchen. This was woman’s work. Since this was Houston, we had to shoo the cockroaches, too.

Fortunately, Karin had already done the shopping. The raw materials were awesome.
A pumpkin
A skid load of rock hard chestnuts
Oceans of thick heavy cream
Tons of butter
A stupendous turkey
Five pounds of potatoes
Cranberries

We had one oven, one sink, and a four burner stove. Because this was Houston, there was a second refrigerator in the garage. No Cuisinart back then, but we had a blender and a mixer. By today’s standards, the kitchen would be a relic for Pioneer Village. As old fashioned as cooking from scratch.

We tackled the soup first, and in no time we had orange bits of pumpkin on every surface. Never mind. We cooked the pumpkin that wasn’t stuck to something, added broth and cream and the spices and pureed the soup in the blender. Fantastic! Smooth as silk. Onward.

Dinner will be served at 6:00.

I fixed chestnuts twice that day. For the first time and the last time.
This is the advice on how to roast chestnuts:
Roast in-shell chestnuts in the oven, but you MUST pierce the shell with a small cut or cut them in half beforehand with a knife to prevent them from exploding when they cook!
Pierce the shell with a small cut. About as easy as piercing a diamond with a small cut. Many of the cuts were on my hands. From scratch took on a new and more sinister meaning.
Next, place the chestnuts in a heavy cast iron pan. Put the pan in a 400 degree oven for a while.
Remove from oven and peel off the shells with a small knife. Do it while they are still hot, if they cool, they will be harder to peel.
This means you pick up a chestnut that has been in a 400 degree oven with your bare hands. Painful burns topped the cuts and the chestnuts dyed my injured fingers the brown color of old boots.
Dinner will be served at 7:00.
Somehow we got through the chestnuts. Husbands chased over to the quick mark to buy even more butter. Good thing I was eating for two.
The turkey had gone into the oven, late of course, and it became obvious that we would serve dinner about 8:00 p.m. If all went well. Meanwhile, the guests were arriving. The host opened the wine. Probably a bad idea.
Cranberries and veggies were not so complicated, but the crème brulèe was one for the books! We had to make a custard from scratch. Into the pot went the rest of the heavy cream. Cook, stir, “coat the spoon.” We poured the custard into the serving dish. Karin sifted heaps of brown sugar over the top and we tucked the dessert into the fridge which now had a “feeding the multitudes” look.
More friends arrived. The kids were starving and we had to offer nibbles and snacks.
We served our scrumptious meal at 9:00.
It was the best tasting thanksgiving dinner ever! Mostly I was giving thanks that the cooking was over. We had survived the ordeal. We were full, sated, as stuffed as the turkey.
Time for the dessert. At 10:00 p.m., we took the crème brulèe out of the fridge and popped it under the broiler to caramelize the sugar. This is a say a prayer and have another glass of wine moment. The cook is hoping she won’t take a melted soggy mess to the table.
Voila! Just like the photo! A spectacular finale. Somehow, the guests made room for our masterpiece. The dinner was a huge success.
I’ve cooked many Gourmet recipes since then, but I never made another Gourmet Thanksgiving Menu. No more pumpkins, certainly no more chestnuts, ever.
Bon appetite! Adieu Gourmet.

Eight Months Gestation

So I finally launched my new website last night after some irritating problems with the hosting software. Now wouldn't you think that someone whose livelihood was hosting websites could write decent instructions about how to launch.

Or am I the only one in the history of the world who still does a site in HTML? Good old HTML, like a second generation computer language --you have to take care of the details, but you have good control and I've discovered that while the 4th generation products may seen easier superficially, you still have to tweak and get down and dirty in the details, so why not understand what you're doing and work on that level to begin with?

Of course I don't have sound or wave files or anything very fancy. And S.O. has already entered the fray with some suggestions for the "home page." I have to change the photo to load faster. Well, see for yourself.

http://www.judycopek.com/

The search engines will still take you to the OLD page at AOL which I will dismantle and point to the new page.

There are links to the blogs of course, and I plan to put more stuff in the scrapbook and some more restaurant shopping fave links up as well as techy links and what have you.

My "schedule" (what a joke) called for me to do the site in March and well, it didn't happen, and I finally got going the week I broke my ankle, and proceeded apace. If I waited until everything was complete and totally perfect it will be next March, so I went to war with the army I had, so to speak.

Lame excuses. I finished The White Rabbit and what a thrilling book that was. New England has many great writers and Dave Daniel is one of them. And a Kerouac scholar, too. Also finished Julia Spencer Flemming's latest, and it was odd that both books had something in common toward the end, but I won't let a single spoiler pass my fingers.

We're doing a late simple Thanksgiving meal today. Turkey breast, stuffing, cranberries, maybe a soupcon of mashed potatoes and gravy. It ain't Thanksgiving without leftovers.

Grapeshot

Comments and kind criticisms about the web site are welcome.