Thanksgiving, pt 2: The Food

Food. I'll readily admit that I'm a foodie, so it should be no surprise that the Thanksgiving food gets its own post.

Corinne's from scratch
whole wheat rolls.

Thanksgiving is the only holiday I can think of that has such strong associations with food. Would the average American even consider having Thanksgiving without a turkey? And then there are the regional or family traditional dishes: in my own family, creamed pearl onions, turnips and sweet potato marshmallow casserole were "must haves" for Thanksgiving. For the group we were hosting, the unusual tradition item would have to be the oyster casserole. And then of course there's the ongoing debate between Corinne and I over sweet versus savory dressings. (I prefer the former, while she opts for the more conventional latter.) In previous years we have done both versions, even going as far as stuffing both of them into the turkey, each in their own cheesecloth bags so that they didn't mix. This was, of course, before our enlightenment by AB that stuffing is evil. We avoided the issue this year by making a sweeter dressing for the pre-Thanksgiving meal we made with friends the weekend before.

But I digress. We had 10 for the main meal, which is a manageable number. The tricky part, though, is figuring out where to cook everything. We had 4 dishes that required the oven: dressing, oyster casserole, broccoli casserole, and whole wheat dinner rolls. Oh, and let's not forget the turkey - brined, of course. We opted to cook the turkey in an electric roaster that Joie brought from Seattle. It tasted great, but the skin didn't brown as well as it would have in the oven; we think the steam couldn't escape as readily as it does when in the oven. The rest of the items we just sequenced and doubled-up in the oven until everything was ready.

We had lots of leftovers to feed us for the rest of the weekend, which is never a bad thing - particularly when those leftovers involve pie for breakfast.

Oyster casserole

Mashed potatoes

Broccoli casserole

Turkey

The desserts were all made ahead of time, and they were numerous and delicious: Pumpkin pie (x2), Apple pie w/candied ginger, Mincemeat pie, and Sweet Potato cheesecake. (Not pictured: Apple+Cranberry pie, plus several gallons of decaf coffee.)

There's no question that hosting Thanksgiving is a lot of work; many things just can't be made ahead of time. But everything turned out great, and we had a great time. We hope to make this a new Thanksgiving tradition!

- Mike (& Corinne)