Menu

[mrissa]

bafleyanne posted her planned Thanksgiving menu, and it's somewhat different from mine. Um. A bit.

We're having:
squash soup with fried sage leaves and a drizzle of sage butter
lasagna, one pan of Italian sausage and one of hamburger for the older set
rosemary buns with optional sun-dried tomato spread
baked yams or sweet potatoes, depending on which looks good
broccoli diablo (with red bell pepper bits and tarragon and mustard and so on)
raw veggie tray and dill dip
lefse
lingonberries
pickled herring
wild rice pudding with sour cherries
pecan pies and pumpkin pie, made by Grandma

Lunch will be turkey sandwiches (with some cheese sandwiches for Grandpa), but I don't like turkey enough to make one and have it coming out every orifice for months, and as I am in charge Thanksgiving, that means lasagna. Festive lasagna! Yummy lasagna! Everybody likes lasagna, particularly me.

What are you having?

Comments

[bafleyanne.livejournal.com]

See, yours sounds delicious. It's just that we're going to only have 3 of us here, and one is a toddler and one is a very picky grownup. So traditional is best.

Can I cook here and then come over to your place for leftovers? :)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It's a heck of a drive....

[bafleyanne.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's the sucky thing about it. Oh well. :)

[apis-mellifera.livejournal.com]

I am somewhat ashamed to admit that I am having, um, three Thanksgiving dinners. This is what happens when you travel to see family, some of whom you haven't seen in five years.

And when your stepmother makes the driest turkey in the world and never has enough for leftovers so your sister makes one of her own the day before.

I have no idea what's on any of the menus other than turkey and cheesy broccoli rice casserole thing at my Aunt Pat's. Which I asked her to make for me because I luuuuuuuuuurve it.

[palinade.livejournal.com]

Turkey breast cos there's only two of us and the bi-ped may or may not eat Turkey.
Garlic dill smashed potatoes
Buttered/nutmeged baked squash
cranberry sauce (cos I loves the whole berries in the gelatinous goo)
mixed baby greens with spinach salad
broccolli or broccolli rabe or some other stalky veggies like asparagus or something maybe like corn
maybe apple pie. maybe apple fritters. Something sweet with apples.

Since there's only two of us, it will be a "weekend" meal, really. Nothing entirely splendiforous.

I'm thinking of maybe trying to make a roasted duck for xmas dinner since beecadet and her bf will be visiting for a couple of days. That's when the stops will be pulled out. I think.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I pull out stops seemingly at random. The common factor is that I'm more likely to do so when it's more than our standard four for dinner. But I'm comfortable enough with most of our friends that I'm also okay with throwing bowls of chili in front of them, so it's not always when there's company.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Oh, hon, are you Norsky-deprived?

Did you know that's where my last name comes from? People at Ellis Island can't spell, or it'd be Lingon. My paternal ancestor and his two brothers decided they didn't want to be just another Peterson if they were going to be stuck with the same name every generation (how weird!), so they were going to call themselves after the berries they grew on their farm back home. One of them succeeded and became Mr. Lingon. My ancestor became Mr. Lingen. And the third brother ran into an immigration official who said, "How patriotic, this thick-voiced Swede wants to name himself after one of our greatest presidents!" So there are some Swedish Lincolns running around related to me.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

My Lincoln cousins apparently settled in Illinois.

[scottjames.livejournal.com]

Something similar happened to my family. I'm told that my original last name sounded something like "Yahms". But became "James", and sounded good and American (thus no one complained).

[pameladean]

Oh, that sounds lovely.

We are going to David's mother's house, so some things are set in stone and some aren't. In stone:

Turkey with chestnut breadcrumb stuffing
Pumpkin pie
Mince pie

I am making the pies, and have not yet decided whether the pumpkin will be vegan or not. If it is not, I will make an apple pie too.

Not in stone:

Green beans
Cauliflower with garlic and ginger

My mother is bringing those.

There will almost certainly be mashed potatoes and gravy.

We used to have a salad but nobody ever ate it, even me.

Pamela

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

"We used to have a salad but nobody ever ate it, even me."

Thanksgiving is all about starch.

B

[tmseay.livejournal.com]

Ooh, that sounds lovely.

It looks like I'll be all alone for Thanksgiving (my roommate just left for Austin today), so I'm going to make whatever I feel up for. The current list:

Croissants
Beef tenderloin in shallot sauce (never a turkey fan myself)
Garlic mashed potatoes
Green beans
Honey-glazed carrots
Strawberry pie (never a cranberry fan myself, either)
White chocolate peppermint cookies

There's nothing on that list that's especially Thanksgiving-y, I know, but I'm with you, M'ris. Better to earnestly give thanks for a Thanksgiving lasagna than to disinterestedly poke your fork into a Thanksgiving turkey.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Garlic mash makes any occasion festive. If only because of the happy-dancing Mrissa.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

^ears perking up^ strawberry pie? Recipe???

[tmseay.livejournal.com]

That's the part I'm still deciding on, actually! A friend of a friend made a lovely strawberry pie earlier this summer (when strawberries were actually in season), and I've been trying to mimic it ever since. Big, fluffy, whipped, and delicious.

My goal for the next four days is to try every strawberry pie recipe I can find in hopes of having the proper one for Thanksgiving. It's an arduous task, but someone's gotta do it--and I'll be sure to report back on the results.

[ksumnersmith.livejournal.com]

Dude, was it by any chance a strawberry chiffon pie? Because *that* I have a recipe for!

If not ... definitely report back where I can read it.

[tmseay.livejournal.com]

Nope, it wasn't a chiffon pie... but I've grown beyond merely duplicating that other pie. I'm now into the full-on experimentation stage, trying anything and everything that comes along.

So if you've got a recipe, send it on over!

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Just two of us this time, so:
posibly I may try out the matzo-ball soup *mix* I have sitting around because I'm slightly boggled by the idea
tomato-and-bread salad (Moosewood recipe, always goes fast
turkey breast
Possibly a stuffing adapted from the Snyders' pretzel box (major adaptation will be to include chorizo instead of sausage
cranberry sauce
asparagus (microwaved or grilled)
kasha and bowties
pumpkin pastry (pumpkin pie filling from _How to Cook Everything_ in Pepperidge Farm's puff pastry shells.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

"kasha and bowties"

The bowtie pasta was called "varnishkes" when I was growing up.

B

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

It still is, except when I'm speaking to someone with no Yiddish background, which is most of the time.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I haven't started thinking about a menu yet. I did get my turkey ordered from Wild Acres Farm (http://www.citypages.com/databank/23/1145/article10868.asp). I'm also thinking about a squash cream soup, and am enteraining fantasies of serving a double soup. There'll be bread stuffing, mashed potatoes with truffle oil, rutabegas, my not-very-sweet cranberry sauce, some green vegetable, and a gravy of some sort (I'm thinking about a shiitake mushroom gravy right now). Maybe wild rice, although I don't have a reliable supplier of the traditionally harvested variety. Green salad, with beets and goat cheese if I can get away with it. Dessert. I don't know what else.

But I'm not cooking until Sunday, so I have time to think about this.

B

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Okay. So maybe "haven't started thinking" was an overstatement.

We've decided to try a double soup: squash or pumpkin, and turnip or rutabega. I hope it will look stunning.

B

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I did a test run of the soup tonight. I made a pumpkin soup, and a pumpkin soup with enough paprika to change the color. Getting the pouring technique correct is hard; it looks good, but there's more of one than the other. Maybe by the end of the course I'll have it down properly.

B

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

How many are you serving, or do you know yet?

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Not very many. Right now it's 11, but the number keeps shifting back and forth.

Last year I fed 25 or so. That was a fine meal.

B

[dendrophilous.livejournal.com]

If my parents are doing what they usually do, we are having turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and a green vegetable. And pumpkin pie.

Traditionalists. :)

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

I'm a turkey person, and luckily my mother is cooking a turkey for Thanksgiving. (Well, I'll cook it myself if necessary; in fact I am for Christmas, at my mother-in-law's place)

What is this *months* thing? We have a day or two of leftovers for a couple of households after the big feast. And that's from a 20-pound turkey; you can get smaller ones you know.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

We were always required to eat leftovers into December. I don't know how my relatives do it, but they manage (and no, we couldn't get smaller ones, because if we were making turkey and Grandma heard we'd gotten a smaller one, she'd bring up a bigger one on ice "to make sure we have enough," and then I'd have two turkeys).

Mom had to explain to Grandma that when I requested "no turkey leftovers" when I was home from college, it counted if she tainted her chicken hotdish or soup or whatever with turkey. Grandma only counted those days when people ate Ole Tacos for dinner as leftovers.

(Ole Taco, in case someone reading this doesn't know: lefse rolled around turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, and lingonberries. Possibly the only thing I even consider missing about Thanksgiving leftovers. Ya for sure you bet.)