What are y'all eating for Thanksgiving?

[Taliesin Stormheller]

... or do you, like me, refuse to celebrate a holiday that glorifies colonialism?
My parents celebrate by eating Chinese food, not American food. (My parents can't take Western food because it makes them literally sick. ) If you want to celebrate the true meaning of Thanksgiving, which means showing thanks to the Native Americans, why not try making Native American dishes?

[rising7]

I've taken to having duck on Thanksgiving.

[ellencho]

Why don't you fuck off and stop judging people based on whether or not you deem them or their actions "western".

If people want to discuss what foods they'll be eating/serving/purchasing for thanksgiving then that's fine. Thankgiving isn't only an American holiday. Thanksgiving exists in other cultures and talking about that here is fine too.

My family likes Thanksgiving because we all live apart from eachother, so it's a good excuse to get together and see eachother. And if we like turkey and western foods it's because I make it taste fucking good.

[wzhao553]

My parents can't take Western food because it makes them literally sick.

http://www.thefighting44s.com/discussion/viewtopic.php?p=72078&highlight=#72078

BTW, my parents consider themselves to be Asian American rather than FOBs, they are staunch Democrats, they like American food and watch American TV so this is not a 'cultural difference' thing.

You've got interesting parents, ma'am.

[ThatsJustSick]

^^So TS, which parents are you referring to today? Your real ones or the ones you conjured up in your head?

[Ninja]

If people want to discuss what foods they'll be eating/serving/purchasing for thanksgiving then that's fine. Thankgiving isn't only an American holiday. Thanksgiving exists in other cultures and talking about that here is fine too.

Huh? I don't know of any other country that celebrates Thanksgiving, except for maybe Canada (my cousin says they celebrate it). Christmas though is celebrated all over the world. The only thing I liked about Thanksgiving growing up was the fact that there was no classes (like most kids, I'd celebrate any holiday to get out of school). Not a big turkey fan, but I love mash potatoes.

[cattygurl]

I'm a holiday whore. I'll celebrate any holiday... except I kind of just turn it into my own thing.

Thanksgiving is "Thanking my cats for allowing me to party day."
Christmas is "It's almost the end of the year so let's gorge ourselves to give the weight-loss new year's resolution some meaning day."
New Year is "fuck the weight loss resolution- life is too short to eat bad food day."

and so on and so forth.

Man, people that restrict their diet to one regional cuisine are... missing out. Poor souls- stuck in culinary purgatory forever. Once food goes into your body, it all comes out the same color (well, similar color range).

Don't be a food racist-nazi!
:x

[ellencho]

If people want to discuss what foods they'll be eating/serving/purchasing for thanksgiving then that's fine. Thankgiving isn't only an American holiday. Thanksgiving exists in other cultures and talking about that here is fine too.

Huh? I don't know of any other country that celebrates Thanksgiving, except for maybe Canada (my cousin says they celebrate it). Christmas though is celebrated all over the world. The only thing I liked about Thanksgiving growing up was the fact that there was no classes (like most kids, I'd celebrate any holiday to get out of school). Not a big turkey fan, but I love mash potatoes.
I know Koreans have Chuseok (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuseok).

[ellencho]

Ok, so I'm in charge of T-giving at my mom's house again and this is my planned menu for this year. After T-giving weekend I"ll be sure to post pics of what I made. My brothers have agreed to help me this year and will be in charge of making some stovetop stuffing (I know, I know, I wanted a chestnut stuffing myself) and a dessert.

turkey - brined and roasted
gravy
fresh cranberry sauce
mashed sweet potatoes
collard greens braised with ham hocks
stuffed mushrooms
biscuits
cornbread pudding
tabouli
some sort of fresh salad
pumpkin cheesecake

And since we're a korean household there will be kimchi somewhere among the other items :)

[kimtae]

Ellen, you don't have to get fancy with the stuffing. If your brothers are doing the stovetop variety, then that means you have a big empty cavity in the turkey just going to waste. Try shoving some chopped pears or spinach or anything else simple in there. Or if you want to get fancy, take yor newly acquired deboning skills, debone a small duck for the main cavity and a quail or gamehen for the front. Oh, yeah, and set a place for me!! :wink:

[minbo]

I don't really celebrate thanksgiving with my family. I do celebrate it with my friends a weekend before or after (since they usualy have family obligations the day of). This year it will be after as I've been busy and can't do it before. Anyway, usually it is potluck and I make a core meal to be sure that everyone can have a full meal irregardless of what is brought (many varied dietary restrictions). Since everyone brings something, the portions I make are half or quarter sized.

Anyway, this year my part of the menu is prospectively:

Non Vegetarian
Ricepaper spring rolls with duck breast
Salad Greens
Clam corn chowder
Pan Seared Scallops over wilted broccoli rabe on a bed of cream mashed potatos with a lemon fish sauce
Pan seared Chicken breast stuffed with Herb Goat cheese with a side of shitake and mitake corn chutney with a baslamic vinegar and butter reduction

Vegetarian
Ricepaper spring rolls with Tofu
Beat salad with salad greens, mint, pine nuts, goat cheese
Corn chowder
Acorn squash stuffed with stir fried greens, Wheat Gluten and fresh porcini mushrooms with an arugula pesto and slices of parmigiano reggiano
Haven't decided. Possibly a tapas selection of roasted vege/cheese and tofu skewers, stuffed shitake mushrooms and a side of pan fried broad noodles with vegetables, hot peppers and mysterious brown sauce. Will consult with my Jain friend on this....

Last year I had a more traditional turkey dinner, the year before that I had a turducken. I might have a Goose and Ham dinner in January

[cattygurl]

Minbo, where are you located, 'cause I'm planning to crash the veggie portion of your meal!

:D

[minbo]

I would be remiss to not mention dessert.

Small ramkin of sticky rice congee with sweet red beans and yellow raisins topped with a carmelized glaze
Small Chocolate and Hazlenut Souffle
Waterchestnut gelato
Mint and Yuzu sorbet

Anyway, I'm in NYC. I don't think that the goods would ship well to South Cali :(. If you are in the area and want to crash let me know!

[kimtae]

Catty, I know your mom lives most of the time in Japan, you're not alone for T-day, are you :( ? Somebody on the West Coast wanna feed the kitty?

[ellencho]

Ellen, you don't have to get fancy with the stuffing. If your brothers are doing the stovetop variety, then that means you have a big empty cavity in the turkey just going to waste. Try shoving some chopped pears or spinach or anything else simple in there. Or if you want to get fancy, take yor newly acquired deboning skills, debone a small duck for the main cavity and a quail or gamehen for the front. Oh, yeah, and set a place for me!! :wink:
Oh I always add stuff to the turkey cavity. I usually add half an apple, half a lemon, half an onion and some chopped up celery. I do my best not to overstuff because that'll F-up my cooking times.

[DijabutiA]

Ehhhhhhhhhhhhh Old Country Buffet? :wink:

[ellencho]

Ehhhhhhhhhhhhh Old Country Buffet? :wink:
Just like OCB. All the way down to retards and old people walking around in adult diapers.

[nskripchun]

No Chinese American Thanksgiving celebration would be complete without turkey jook/congee. The first thing my mom always does with the carcass leftovers is throw into a crockpot with some rice.

My childhood memories of post-Thanksgiving / Christmas time are linked to the flavor of turkey jook with fresh green onions and a little bit of soy.

[blockthebox]

Ok, so I'm in charge of T-giving at my mom's house again and this is my planned menu for this year. After T-giving weekend I"ll be sure to post pics of what I made. My brothers have agreed to help me this year and will be in charge of making some stovetop stuffing (I know, I know, I wanted a chestnut stuffing myself) and a dessert.

turkey - brined and roasted
gravy
fresh cranberry sauce
mashed sweet potatoes
collard greens braised with ham hocks
stuffed mushrooms
biscuits
cornbread pudding
tabouli
some sort of fresh salad
pumpkin cheesecake

And since we're a korean household there will be kimchi somewhere among the other items :)

Of course I can count on ellen to be a turkey briner! I'll post my photos and recipe for my turkey shortly. If there's one thing in the world I know, it's this:

Brining is the ONLY way to produce a perfectly moist and delicious turkey. EVERYTHING ELSE IS CRAP.

[vsoy]

I'll have to try brining for a fresh turkey next year, but fresh turkey is pretty damn good and fresh heritage turkey a small notch above supermarket fresh turkey. I thought about brining this year, but the different webpages were saying don't brine for heritage turkeys and I was afraid of fucking up an already expensive bird.

Heritage turkey was something I always wanted to try, it's what people ate until large scale turkey farming took off during the '60's and '70's. The meat is definitely more flavorful and "structured" in a good way and the drippings for gravy and turkey stock for rice porridge/jook is to die for. Because of cost, it's something I won't do every year, but once in a while.

Things I did different: cheese cloth soaked in buttah and tenting the bird in tinfoil. Shoving sage butter slices between the skin and breast meat which had a pretty cool tumor-like appearance. Slices looked like electron microscope images of single cell cross sections. It was so fucking cool, I wished I took pics of the sage butter.

The menu(relatively simple in comparison to the cook/artisans on this forum)
Heritage turkey with chestnut, sausage, cornbread stuffing with fresh majoram and thyme.
Butternut pie with butternut from garden, apples, gruyere
Sweet corn muffins
Butternut pie with butternut from garden with homemade whipped cream.
Fresh cranberry sauce (I can't believe how easy and yummy it is)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v734/vsoy/IMG_0148.jpg

[ellencho]

Nice bird. You can already tell that it's a more elongated bird than the mass produced kind that everyone else gets. I wonder if it has more thigh meat than supermarket birds, because I know those are raised to have a lot of breast meat and less thigh meat.

I wonder why they advise you against brining a heritage turkey? It's not like they're pre-brined like kosher birds. And I don't think it would dilute the flavor. Weird.

And if you don't mind me asking, how much did you pay per lb, and how big is your bird? Did you feed a lot of people?



Ok so here's my turkey, brined, dried in the fridge for 2 days. The terrier is a girl and is named Remy the poodle is a boy and is named Bumper. Yes, I know we have two white dogs. Yes we are sellouts.
http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a120/foxandpoo/thanksgiving05/posingwithturkey.jpg

Here's Remy sneaking a sniff.
http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a120/foxandpoo/thanksgiving05/sniffingthebird.jpg

Here's the turkey all finished. It didn't take that long. For a 15 lb bird, I think it was in the oven for less than 2 hours. We do not stuff our birds with stuffing, I just throw a couple of aromatics in there as it cooks. You're also probably wondering where the leg tips have gone. I had them removed so that serving the drumsticks would be easier. There are these long cartilaginous tendons inside of the legs that are a giant pain in the ass. If you have your butcher cut off the ends of the leg tips, you'll be able to slide the tendons out after the bird is cooked.
http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a120/foxandpoo/thanksgiving05/turkeyfront05.jpg
http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a120/foxandpoo/thanksgiving05/turkeyside05.jpg

So I didn't manage to get pictures of everything individually, I'll just show you pics of our sides. We decided against biscuits since we had so much starch anyway.

Corn pudding. Sort of like cornbread but moister and full of corn kernels. And we used a mix ahahahahah!!! :twisted:
http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a120/foxandpoo/thanksgiving05/cornpudding05.jpg

Cranberry sauce - half of our family likes chunky, the other likes jellied.
http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a120/foxandpoo/thanksgiving05/cranbunny05.jpg

Collard greens. Every year my family fights over who gets the ham hocks that we braise the greens in so I made it a lot easier this year and actually bought ham shanks, which are bigger and meatier, and shredded them into the greens.
http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a120/foxandpoo/thanksgiving05/collards05.jpg

Stuffed mushrooms. I make these for my mom every year. It's just a bunch of stuffing and chopped jalapenos.
http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a120/foxandpoo/thanksgiving05/mushrooms05.jpg

Stovetop stuffing baked in the oven to make it crunchy on top.
http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a120/foxandpoo/thanksgiving05/stuffing05.jpg

Here's all the sides at the kitchen table. There's a couple salads, kimchi, gravy, and mashed sweet potatoes.
http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a120/foxandpoo/thanksgiving05/sidesC05.jpg

Dessert was pumpkin cheesecake as requested by my mom. I wasn't goign to make dessert but I broke down and made this for her.
http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a120/foxandpoo/thanksgiving05/pumpkincheesecake05.jpg
http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a120/foxandpoo/thanksgiving05/dessert05.jpg

Here's the dessert my brothers made AFTER thanksgiving dinner. They ate most of it, here's pic of what was leftover the next morning. They made a cake with a little cutout of Remy on top.
http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a120/foxandpoo/thanksgiving05/foxcake.jpg

And this pic is of my first plate. I ended up having about 2 of these and then promptly went into a food coma for the next two days.
http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a120/foxandpoo/thanksgiving05/myplate05.jpg

Here's some bonus dog pics of them in food comas too.
http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a120/foxandpoo/thanksgiving05/sleepingfuzies.jpg
http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a120/foxandpoo/thanksgiving05/sleepingfox.jpg
http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a120/foxandpoo/thanksgiving05/sleepinggumdrop.jpg

[nskripchun]

^i agree... that food looked freak'n delicious.

[vsoy]

Remy and Bumper are so cute in those pictures, especially the ones after eating all that good food.

We got a 11.7 pounder and paid $4.99/lb with a shopper card. The retail was $5.50 and I've heard they can go as high as $7.5/lb in other parts of the country. Not only is it much longer, it has a lot less breast meat. Looking at your lovely bird's breast, it's Pam Anderson in comparison to my Kate Moss turkey. It did have a lot of thigh and back meat which is my favorite. The drippings was significantly less which made basting challenging but it was quite good for gravy.

This one site (which I found somewhat obnoxious and fussy in my opinion) said brining heritage turkeys was not a good idea because the flavor would be diluted out. Maybe the flavors would be exchanged out in the salt solution? Aging does make sense. Different pages had conflicting information about temperature doneness so I went for food safety by getting the stuffing temperature to 160F.
http://www.williamrubel.com/turkey.prepare.html


5. Brining the turkey: I do not advise brining heritage turkeys. My own brining theory is to apply brine poultry that is of poor quality. Brine introduces water and salt into the flesh of the bird. This dilutes natures flavors. While it is true that salt is a flavor enhancer, I think brining is a crude way to develop the flavor of a heritage turkey. I will also mention that the standard method by which birds are cooled after having been slaughtered in American slaughterhouses is to dip them in a bath of cold water. The birds may take up uas much as 5% water by weight from this soaking. Letting the bird sit, unwrapped in a frost-free refrigerator of a day or two, see "Aging the turkey," above, might actually improve flavor by removing some of this excess water.

In the past, we ended up getting our bird late in the day and getting stuck with the Godzillas. This is the first time we got what we wanted and it was smaller than our 14 lb cat. I was joking around that we ought to roast the cat and get more leftovers. Bad joke, I know, but I like to tease her.

Because in the past we had gotten Godzillas, we were kind of disappointed how much left overs we ended up with so it's hard for me to say. They say you get more meat per pound but I dunno.

So here's my kitty checking out the turkey:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v734/vsoy/IMG_0126.jpg

Usually when I give her scraps, she wolfs it down and asks for more. But this time, she ate it and actually "thought" about it. She paused after eating for about a minute, not moving, it was very weird and then asked for more.

[vsoy]

Ooh ellen, is that a graham cracker crust along the sides of that yummy pumpkin cheesecake?

[ellencho]

Ah, so more back and thigh meat rather than the opposite. My family would have liked that. Interestingly though, my family ate a lot of breast meat this time around too. You're probably right about diluting out the flavor though because the breast meat was really tender and very juicy but at the same time I'm not sure if that's because I brined it and cooked it well, or if it's because of the turkey I bought. I got mine from the Korean poultry stand at the farmer's market here in Philly and their turkey meat never disappoints. I asked the owner what kind of turkey it was, and she said it's just a regular fresh turkey. I think you paid more than triple for your bird per lb what we paid though. I think I got away with 1.80 a lb.

So cute about your cat contemplating the turkey. I don't think our dogs contemplate anything. They sniff it, and then they swallow it. You rarely see them chew.

And I did use a graham cracker crust on my cheesecake. I don't normally use graham crackers for my cheesecake crusts though, but it was on hand at the time. Cook's Illustrated recommends using Barnum and Bailey's animal crackers because they have a nice sort of lemony kick to them, and that's what I normally use.

[blockthebox]

Oh wow, those heritage turkeys are very expensive. I usually have my mom buy a turkey a few days beforehand since I'm not around - I think she gets it at Costco. Also, that's a great idea about getting the tips of the legs cut off.

I tried something a little different this year: Instead of brining in just a regular solution of saltwater, I also added a cup and a half of brown sugar to the brine for a 13 pound turkey and a few lemons. I also stuff the cavity with onions, carrots, celery, garlic, thyme and butter and was much more attentive with the basting. I've been brining my turkeys for a while now and my entire family agreed that this year's turkey was the best so far and some even proclaimed the best turkey they've ever had.

I usually do a turkey for Christmas too, but this year I'm thinking of doing a succulent rib roast.

[badwill]

^^I want to be part of Ellen's family. That's a mighty nice Thanksgiving dinner. I am eating Fast Food for Thanksgiving. Aren't you guys jealous?

[blockthebox]

Heh, yeah - this is my official offer to ellen to stay at my place any time she wants. I have a large kitchen WITH a dishwasher!

Also, for Thanksgiving, we had the usual Korean fare that my mom prepares for the occasion - rice, kimchee and mook (this sort of gelatinous bean cake type thing with a soy sauce, sesame seed oil and scallion dressing). Yum!

[Scowl]

Back in New York my grandma would usually make some kickass Chinese food fer Thanksgivin', I think the closest I've ever had to turkey on Thanksgivin' was fried chicken.

This time around I had some good 'ole hotpot and about 5 different kindsa alcohol. Man, I drank so much, all that alky-hol kicked my liver like an ornery mule.

All them turkeys sure do look good. Any o' you chefs gunna be in Houston or New York next year? We can put together a huge feast, an' invite the entire neighborhood ta eat, an' then kill 'em an' take their land.