I wish I was like you, easily amu--wait, I *am* easily amused.

[mrissa]

What do you wish you were going to have at your Thanksgiving dinner that you know you probably won't get?

If you don't celebrate Thanksgiving at any time of year, feel free to answer with whatever other large meal-based holiday you do celebrate.

Comments

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Nothing, really. But then, I'm making the stuffing, cooking the turkey, and bringing the wine myself -- the key elements. Plus Pamela is bringing the key dessert, the mince pie.

[clarentine]

Mince pie - that's exactly what I will miss the most, from my grandmother's holiday table. No one but me and her ever ate it, and now it's just me. >:-( Maybe I'll make it anyway, other nibblers be damned.

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

I wish my sister and her boyfriend were going to be around for Christmas dinner, but I don't think that's going to happen, sadly.

As for food, well, I think it's all pretty much coverered. I'm still definitely at the apprentice stage for Christmas cake, so I suspect that we'll all be wishing for an upgrade on that, but I've got to learn at some point, and if we all made Christmas cake we'd still be eating it by next Christmas. I've just bought another bottle of brandy, so I should be able to make sure it's got enough alcohol in it, at least.

Oh, and I do hope that my mum will handle the more effortful parts by delegating to family members instead of delegating to supermarket pre-made dishes, but other than offering to help, that's not my decision to make.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yah, supermarket pre-made is good enough for some things (veggie trays, for example, if someone is exhausted and wants to take that route), but not really for others. And for me, that "not really for others" covers just about everything. Even at Byerly's.

[the_rck]

At this point, I'm afraid I won't have a Thanksgiving dinner at all. I'm coming down with a cold and may not be fit to go to my in-laws' place. (I'm judging by how things went for my husband. I caught the cold from him.) There's something wrong with contemplating eating leftovers on Thanksgiving.

One thing I miss from my childhood is stuffing actually cooked in the turkey. My mother used to do that, but my mother-in-law does dressing in a pan on the side.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I got sick on Thanksgiving morning the year I was thirteen, and I wasn't really well again until Christmas Eve. That was not any fun. Please to be dodging that.

[lynnal.livejournal.com]

My family. While I don't actually want the stress of having them descend on my house, I would like them to magically appear and enjoy the meal. Especially my dad, who died this summer.

On the food side, my grandma's rolls. I have her recipe, but my chances of getting them to come out just right are slim. For the most part I can cook the food the way I like it. There is quite a lot of it to do, but I will get help from Victor. In our decision to relax and not travel this year, we also resolved that Turkey Day does not have to be Thursday. It might turn out to be Thursday anyway, but having the option to take more time makes for a much less stressful holiday for me.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

First time through it all without someone you love is hard even if you didn't always see them for every holiday. I'm sorry. I'll be thinking of you.

[cyranocyrano.livejournal.com]

Reflecting general comments above: My sweeties. Not that I will object to the company I expect to keep, but it would be nice.

[yhlee.livejournal.com]

Stuffing with gravy. I only know how to make cream gravies, not the meat kind, and I lost the one good stuffing recipe I had and am afraid to go looking for another. We're probably going to have some kind of random pasta dish for Thanksgiving, but then our household is too small for a turkey to make sense.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

When we had Thanksgivings out in California without family (except each other), I tended to make lasagna. timprov misses the lasagna, I think, and my mom is a bit jealous of it.

[arielstarshadow.livejournal.com]

We're actually not doing a Thanksgiving meal this year - we essentially had Thanksgiving at the end of October when my father came out to visit, and we decided we just really didn't have the money for another $300 feast.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

And are you happy with that, or do you think you'll miss it? Because me, I am glad to take any opportunity to not have turkey.

[vcmw]

Green bean casserole. I am the only one who likes it, and so it just seems silly to make it for only me. We will have my mom's curried yams and cashew-nut vegetarian gravy, though!

Also, my grandmother, who will be enjoying a month in Sicily this year and so will miss Thanksgiving. I'm glad for her (Sicily!) but sort of wish she could teleport home for the meal.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Cashews are our friiiiiends. And so are yams. So that sounds really good to me.

(But we're having yams, too, so that'll be okay.)

[columbina.livejournal.com]

I, um, kinda wish I was not having Thanksgiving dinner.

I don't really like having people over, and Thanksgiving is not a very meaningful holiday to me ... but it's my wife's Big Holiday and I can't really deprive her of the chance to cook something big and elaborate - she clearly enjoys it so much.

Sorry to be the person with the negative reply. I think I'm mostly not into large meal-based holidays. I come from a Food Is Love and a Food Is Religion culture - so I do understand the impulse - but the problem is that 1) cooking itself is rarely ever a pleasant or meditative activity to me*, and 2) my impulses to feed people tend to be confined to one or two people at a time.

*The lone exception is that I have to spend several hours brewing up a pot of gumbo several times a year, just to keep my soul fed.

[columbina.livejournal.com]

I might add, just to show I am not all ashes and sackcloth, that the carcass of this year's Indian-spiced turkey is going to make an extremely interesting gumbo later! So there's that.

[aamcnamara.livejournal.com]

Snow.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I hear you. Ours is melting.

[wshaffer.livejournal.com]

Some time, I would like to revive my French great-grandmother's tradition of serving escargot as part of the Thanksgiving meal. Since I'm helping to prepare Thanksgiving dinner this year, I could do it, I suppose, but never having prepared snails before, I think my first attempt should be for a lower-stakes occasion.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Hmm, on the other hand, if it goes badly this time, there would be plenty else to eat!

[carbonel]

Well, this is the first year in roughly forever that I haven't gone to Chicago to be with family for Thanksgiving, so that's the big thing that I'll miss. (I have a lot of work to do, and it just made more sense to stay in town.)

As for the foods associated with Thanksgiving that I particularly enjoy, the main ones are sweet potatoes (made fresh, not canned, and brown sugar and butter, marshmallows not really desired) and stuffing (no celery, or so cooked it doesn't crunch).

For the last several years, I've been bringing a Guinness ginger cake to our family Thanksgiving, but last year it totally failed to rise (I suspect either a beer failure or a baking powder failure) and I did not bring the inch-high bricklike object. So that's something else that's missing.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Canned sweet potatoes are an abomination. Frankly I prefer mine savory--rosemary or sage rather than brown sugar--and marshmallows are right out.

I also do not want celery in my stuffing.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Suckling pig.

I am going to attempt spoon bread for the first time, so if that works, I will get that.

[19-crows.livejournal.com]

Mashed potatoes. Apparently my husband's family always had them when he was a kid, and he hates them. For reasons unknown they started having rice pilaf at some point.

I'm going to bring some. Normally I don't cook but it will be worth it.

[clarentine]

I'm a survivor of the mashed-potato-every-night sort of table, and I heartily concur with your husband's moratorium on the stuff. >:-) Give me any other kind of potato dish, and I'll happily eat it.

[tiger-spot.livejournal.com]

Gosh, nothing. We have got all the bases covered. Now, we won't have all the possible desserts (I am making pumpkin pie and apple dumplings, so no chocolate bourbon pecan pie this week), but I am sure we will get to the rest of them eventually, over the course of the holiday baking season. Rolls are nice and not planned, but we've got mashed potatoes and stuffing both already, so they would just be carbohydrate overkill. Better to save them for a different meal, where they can be better appreciated as just the right amount of tasty warm starch.

I did just get linked to an interesting-sounding persimmon cranberry sauce (http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Persimmon-Cranberry-Sauce-233000), which I will not get to sub in at the last minute because someone else is bringing the cranberry sauce. But I can always try it later.

Hmmm... and one of these days I would like a bigger table. But the card table adjunct works fine for now.

[bad-latin.livejournal.com]

I very much like the idea of taking the whole of the Thanksgiving/December-holiday-of-choice/New-Year's season to bake holiday desserts ...

[ellarien]

I think the thing I miss most about Thanksgiving -- having moved back to the UK October before last -- is getting to spend quality time with a cat called Skippy.

Skippy spent a few months as a stray, abandoned by my neighbors at the apartment complex; I fed and brushed him for a while, and then introduced him to a colleague who had recently lost a cat to extreme old age, who took him in and shortly afterwards adopted a couple of girl-kittens to keep him company. Skippy would have no truck with the outdoors after that, and was very wary of strangers, but every Thanksgiving when that colleague hosted a pot-luck dinner, I would go into the room where he was hiding under the bed and he'd pop out and pet himself against me, usually getting white hairs all over my best clothes.

[zwol.livejournal.com]

We're going to my SO's brother's house for Thanksgiving this year and ... I wish we weren't. It's a two-three hour drive each way, and it's going to be loud and crowded. I'm not a fan of loud or crowded under any circumstances, and having to trek a long way for it seems like adding insult to injury.

On the other hand, we are trekking all the way to Warsaw for Christmas with my sister, and that is going to be nothing but awesome. It'll be neither loud nor crowded, it's a country I've never been to, and there will be snow. The only thing that would improve it would be one of those cyberpunk language chips so I could actually speak Polish.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

That does sound awesome. I look forward to hearing about it, even without cyberpunk implants.

[aedifica]

I think possibly a feeling of belonging. I'm planning to go to Nate's family's dinner (and I don't know yet if that means immediate family, or the family across the road, i.e. huge extended family). I really like Nate's family, and they like me and welcome me (which I realize is a blessing!), but I just don't see them often enough for the sense of them being my family too to grow strong.

[pameladean]

Salmon the way my youngest brother cooks it (he's a professional, which means that he apologized for some of the best salmon I ever had the last time he made it for a holiday meal). It will be fine, though. David's stuffing makes everything else better.

P.

[bad-latin.livejournal.com]

Oh, I could go for some salmon! I wish I could taste your brother's version -- I suspect I've only had middling salmon, and enjoyed it, so I'd love to know what really good salmon is like. :)

[genarti]

My two younger brothers. They're both living in Oregon now, which means it's quite a trek to New England; they're coming for Christmas, but not Thanksgiving. It'll be the first year ever without at least one of them there. The house will be so weird and quiet, lacking its two most boisterous members! And, quite apart from that, I suspect we'll have a terrifyingly vast quantity of leftovers without them. (We have a terrifyingly vast quantity of leftovers in any case, because Thanksgiving in my family means turkey sandwiches for days, but we also have huge appetites as a rule. So it's generally manageable.)

In terms of food... you know, I can't think of anything, really! I always have to be the one to insist on the presence of mashed potatoes, so I've become the designated potato-masher of the family, but I've already insisted on it.

Maybe enough gravy. We always run out before everyone's done.

[catlinye-maker.livejournal.com]

My mother' apple pie, and for that matter, my mother and father, who passed away some time ago. I miss them still, especially this time of year.

[dancing-crow.livejournal.com]

I'd be pleased to see pan fried dumplings with dipping sauce, and scallion pancakes - somehow they just don't quite fit into anyone else's menu planning for Thanksgiving.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

They fit into mine! Right next to the lasagna....

[miz-hatbox.livejournal.com]

My brother. Snow would be nice too.

As for food, I would like to have stuffing as prepared by Mirth's mom. Her stuffing recipe includes sausage meat, and it must be cooked in the bird or it doesn't count. Supposedly it is the best stuffing ever. I have never had it--I've never been at their house for a holiday that involved turkey dinner. but I would dearly like to try her stuffing.

[jenfullmoon.livejournal.com]

Possibly my favorite Thanksgiving was the one we spent in a SF restaurant. No, really. My mom and her sister prefer bone dry turkey and soggy wet stuffing and the Thanksgiving meal is not the world's yummiest.

Ditto the company, really.

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

I'm going to be on vacation Elsewhere this year, so I won't be getting ANY of my most favorite things.

Notable missing items:

Carrots with pistachios and Cointreau.
Very traditional bread cube stuffing with sage, celery, and onion.
Corn pudding.
Rum chiffon pie.

[bad-latin.livejournal.com]

Rum chiffon pie sounds so intriguing!

[bad-latin.livejournal.com]

My youngest sister is working at her waitress job on Thanksgiving (and oh, how old it makes me feel to know my baby sister has a job) and so we are all going to crash the restaurant and try to embarrass her.

So I suspect what I will be missing is vegetables. I am not much for desserts, rolls, or starchy sides at the moment. Last year I made oodles of vegetable side dishes for Thanksgiving dinner -- coconut curry brussels sprouts and garam masala green beans and something with cauliflower I forget now -- and it was so exactly what I wanted. I think I will be making do with an iceberg lettuce salad this year. But it will be fun no matter what!