a very bloggy thanksgiving

Did you seriously think we would let Turkey Day pass without a mention on the good ol' blog?
Of course you didn't. And of course we wouldn't.

Thanksgiving commands a very important place in my year. Forgive the apocryphal origins and bad pilgrim celebration stories. Ignore the football and the sometimes-awkward family and the fact that we usually end up wolfing-down our meals. And while it's true that for many families, Thanksgiving is more likely to come from cans and boxes than farmer's market stalls, it is still one of the few (only?) American holidays devoted to food. No matter whether that food is fresh or packaged, nearly everyone that I talk with has strong memories (usually fond) of the holiday primarily because of the central place that food takes in all the festivities. Food makes memories stronger.

One day in the year that we get off of work and focus on food. Maybe everyone doesn't have a gourmet feast, but as a victory for eating, I'll take what I can get.

A and I rarely make the same meal twice. The same holds true for Thanksgiving. A part of me always wants to revive old meals and continue traditions, but part of me is so curious about new tastes. So we strike a balance. We do some dishes from family recipes, we create some from memory and we make a few new ones from recipes that we've culled over the past few lead-up months.

Personally, I find it fascinating how much technology and culture have intertwined over the course of even my life (A finds it slightly less interesting when I wax philosophical on this subject). I never would have expected that so much of our family's meal would come from the internet and yet, last Thursday, we were cooking a recipe from A's grandmother alongside new favorites we'd found online. Luddism is far from my mindset, hell, we bought our pie from a blog, but there is a part of me that wants for the marginalia of old handwritten recipes. Maybe I'll scrawl the web recipes onto index cards and spill some leftover gravy on them to make them look well-loved. Or maybe I'll just start looking for new recipes for next year.

So, with links when appropriate, here was the P & A 2007 Thanksgiving:

Mesclun salad with dates, goat cheese & molasses-garam masala vinaigrette
(with adjustments to the recipe's dressing)
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Cider-glazed carrots
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Brussels sprouts with Renee's chipotle-glazed nuts
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Coconut curried uchiki kuri squash (from Viridian Farms)
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Calmyrna fig and walnut dressing
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Mushroom & Fennel Bread Pudding
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Granny B's Velveeta Mac & Cheese (we're not all highbrow around here)
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Mashed potatoes from memory
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Mushroom Country Gravy
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Bacon-Wrapped Turkey with Pear Cider Gravy
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Cranberry Sauce with Orange Bitters & Harlequin
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Buttermilk Pie with Cardamom and Nutmeg from The Acorn
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Marty's Sweet Potato Pie

The standouts were definitely the bread pudding, which was a great (richer) take on traditional stuffing and the turkey gravy, which was worth all of the extra effort of pureeing roasted pears and cooking down the turkey-bacon drippings with hard cider. This was A's first time helping to cook the majority (read: all) of Thanksgiving. Perhaps I got us in over both of our heads, but we managed to get through it with only minor gravy scalds on our legs. The end count: 13 dishes for 8 people.