Wednesday, November 16, 2005
Hello, everybody!
I got back from the wonderful mountains and jumped into a mountain of work. Just Monday night had to go to a six course Pecan Dinner at Langston house which so elegant and delicious as to be downright decadent. We ATE for three hours! I'll get back to this. Then late yesterday afternoon, I went to the eye doctor and had my eyes dilated. NOW I am neither stuffed nor half-blinded, so I go to Calicocat and discover that it doesn't want to work, and had to do all kinds of things to get it functioning again from this end.
Hope everybody else is ready to blog around a bit because I want to talk about Thanksgiving memories.
When I was a kid in the 1940s, we had Thanksgiving each year in Garden Valley, Georgia, which isn't a real town but a farming community where my grandmother had grown up and where her brother and his family still lived in the family home. That was when Grownups Ruled, and the deal was - since there were so many people - that the adults ate first, and then they cleared the table and reset it for the kids. (I would never do that to a kid myself)
My memory of the food is that it was spectacularly delicious, but it may just be that I was very hungry!! I was a very picky eater as a child (wish I'd kept that trait) but there were always things that I loved. We never had turkey then except at Thanksgiving and Christmas, so it was a big deal. (There were turkeys at the farm, and I was always afraid of the big gobbler.)My grandmother told me that there was a time when turkeys were boiled because nobody had an oven big enough for one) There were always creamed tiny butterbeans that I piled on top of mashed potatoes. There were both white and sweet potatoes. The sweet potatoes were called Humpty Dump in my family. This was mashed sweet potatoes with raisins and (I think now) a lot of brown sugar and butter, topped with marshmallows. The marshmallows were always perfect despite the fact that the cooks were using a wood stove! (How they cooked so well without temperature control is beyond me)
There were especially wonderful, very moist cakes -- not like any cakes I've had since. Real coconut cake, for example, and caramel. (I don't think we had fruitcake and ambrosia at Thanksgiving. I associate ambrosia with Christmas)
Hope everybody else is ready to blog around a bit because I want to talk about Thanksgiving memories.
When I was a kid in the 1940s, we had Thanksgiving each year in Garden Valley, Georgia, which isn't a real town but a farming community where my grandmother had grown up and where her brother and his family still lived in the family home. That was when Grownups Ruled, and the deal was - since there were so many people - that the adults ate first, and then they cleared the table and reset it for the kids. (I would never do that to a kid myself)
My memory of the food is that it was spectacularly delicious, but it may just be that I was very hungry!! I was a very picky eater as a child (wish I'd kept that trait) but there were always things that I loved. We never had turkey then except at Thanksgiving and Christmas, so it was a big deal. (There were turkeys at the farm, and I was always afraid of the big gobbler.)My grandmother told me that there was a time when turkeys were boiled because nobody had an oven big enough for one) There were always creamed tiny butterbeans that I piled on top of mashed potatoes. There were both white and sweet potatoes. The sweet potatoes were called Humpty Dump in my family. This was mashed sweet potatoes with raisins and (I think now) a lot of brown sugar and butter, topped with marshmallows. The marshmallows were always perfect despite the fact that the cooks were using a wood stove! (How they cooked so well without temperature control is beyond me)
There were especially wonderful, very moist cakes -- not like any cakes I've had since. Real coconut cake, for example, and caramel. (I don't think we had fruitcake and ambrosia at Thanksgiving. I associate ambrosia with Christmas)
# posted by Charlotte @ 5:46 PM 
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Comment: I ran out of space because I was going on so long.
Please, everybody else jump in and let's talk about favorite Thanksgiving foods from childhood and from now.
Please, everybody else jump in and let's talk about favorite Thanksgiving foods from childhood and from now.
you already know the story about my sister being born on thanksgiving day so i got a new sister, no turkey, and potato soup for my thanksgiving meal. that's a memory that floats up every time i see potato soup even though my sister will be 51 this year. my other thanksgiving memory is cooking the turkey with my sister the first year after our mother had died. i was 20 and my sister was 15 so we had never been allowed to cook a turkey before. we cleaned out one end of the butterball but neglected the other. the giblet bag smoldered as we baked the turkey. my whole family agrees that the turkey that year was the best ever despite being permeated with carbons.
# posted by 
: Wednesday, November 16, 2005
: Wednesday, November 16, 2005
Potato soup for Thanksgiving. Yes, I do remember that story.
I think that the thing about turkey is that no matter how you cook it, how it turns out is still sort of 50-50.
I think there is no better slice of turkey than the one that you snitch while carving, unless it's the one you make a sandwich of late Thanksgiving night.
I think that the thing about turkey is that no matter how you cook it, how it turns out is still sort of 50-50.
I think there is no better slice of turkey than the one that you snitch while carving, unless it's the one you make a sandwich of late Thanksgiving night.
My strongest Thanksgiving memories are the day before and the day after.
Last year, for a reason I can't remember right now, I decided at 10:00 on Wednesday to start cooking. I'd bought all the food, and I went right at it, and when the kids were all home, we ate, and ate, and ate. The big effect was that Thursday was complete leisure with magnificent snacking. Almost like Christmas in the sense of a family in a coccoon with no one else visiting and no one dreaming of going out.
Many, many years ago, my mother and her friends read about the street children of Saigon and organized a fundraiser for the day after Thanksgiving. They made huge vats of simple soup, and asked everyone who came to bring a loaf of bread or a dessert as well as a contribution. It was such a nice contrast to the big holiday, with such a wonderful combination of the political and the person.
I love all the food and the full Thursday with company adventure, but they all run together compared to these two adventures.
Last year, for a reason I can't remember right now, I decided at 10:00 on Wednesday to start cooking. I'd bought all the food, and I went right at it, and when the kids were all home, we ate, and ate, and ate. The big effect was that Thursday was complete leisure with magnificent snacking. Almost like Christmas in the sense of a family in a coccoon with no one else visiting and no one dreaming of going out.
Many, many years ago, my mother and her friends read about the street children of Saigon and organized a fundraiser for the day after Thanksgiving. They made huge vats of simple soup, and asked everyone who came to bring a loaf of bread or a dessert as well as a contribution. It was such a nice contrast to the big holiday, with such a wonderful combination of the political and the person.
I love all the food and the full Thursday with company adventure, but they all run together compared to these two adventures.
I love the idea of the big table and that idea of buiding a room around the table. Our biggest Thanksgiving problem is logistics -- figuring out where to put all the dishes. I've been contemplating ways to simplify the whole thing - but so far have only come up with the possibility of not having any kind of congealed salad.
There was the memorable Thanksgiving when my mother served nine forms of root vegetables. Baked potatoes, mashed potatoes, turnips, beets, radishes, carrots (two forms), sweet potatoes, and something else I am forgetting. Wonderful, completely overwhelming, and we have never let her live it down.
my sister cooked the turkey breast down per my pass along hint from this blog. the only problem is that we couldn't see the little pop up thing and we were at my nephew's who has no idea of what a meat thermometer is and certainly doesn't own one. we did take all the bag out of the turkey this year.:)
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# posted by : Monday, November 28, 2005
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