For those of you who are making Thanksgiving dinner

[foxfirefey]

What are you making! Regale us with your planned tasties.

For those of you who don't do Thanksgiving, is there a particular holiday meal you most look forward to?

Comments

[ilyena_sylph]

+laughs+ Mom and I are cooking a traditional Southern meal for 30 people. The real question is what aren't we making... *grins*

I can't wait to see what other people say, though.

This is a great prompt.

[foxfirefey]

I actually don't know what a traditional Southern meal consists of!

[ilyena_sylph]

Lemme see if I can find last year's menu, then. Admittedly, Aunts will be bringing a couple of dishes, so there's the answer to what we're not making.... *chuckles*

Twenty-plus pound turkey.
Gravy.
Dressing. We bake it separately, so it's dressing, not stuffing, which would be cooked inside the bird. But that's a distinction that's slowly getting lost.
Biscuits/yeast rolls, at least one and generally both.
Green beans (and/or green bean casserole) -- cooked with either bacon fat or ham pieces and an onion. Say... four quarts, probably?
Corn (probably 2 quarts and a pint).
Mashed potatoes (fifteen pounds or so).
Cranberry salad.
Five-cup salad.
Waldorf salad. (Aunt 1)
Green salad. (Aunt 2)
Vegetable tray.
Pimento-cheese celery.
Cream-cheese celery.
Pumpkin pie.
Pecan pie.
Cheesecake.
Brownies.

Gyah. I'm still missing something, I know it.

[cofax7]

I will make maple-walnut pie, and Heresluck's cranberry-ginger sauce to go with the turkey. Nom.

[existence]

Sometimes I make something larger for Thanksgiving, but I think this year, there's:

- ryecrisp, goat cheese, veg, for appetizers.
- brined turkey, gravy, probably in white wine, because we're like that
- fresh brussel sprouts for mom, spinach for me, and sweet potatoes
- cornbread sausage walnut dressing because it is awesome
- probably one minute prep cibatta with rosemary mostly for sandwiches
- cranberry something. (I'm not a cranberry sauce fan, I could be swayed to something else here.)
- probably pumpkin cheesecake, gingersnap crust.
- also tempting: balsamic reduction and fruit, side of pumpkin cream cheese, sweet crispy crackery something
- also probably i will mix myself a half pitcher of something mildly alcoholic (mulled apple something?), because while i drink wine socially, i don't do it on my own usually

[ilyena_sylph]

Maple-walnut pie sounds amazing.

[gramina]

There are fewer than ten for Thanksgiving this year, so it's a fairly small thing -- that, plus not having any time off before or after the Day.

But we'll be having roasted turkey, gravy, dressing, mashed potatoes, winter squash, brussels sprouts, a green veg tbd (based on what looks good at the time), probably sweet potatoes, spiced cranberries in port wine, probably a pumpkin pie, and probably an egg custard. Menu subject to variation depending :)

[brewsternorth]

Funnily enough, though only American-by-adoption, I am planning on cooking something tasty for Thanksgiving. Namely, roast acorn squash stuffed with a mixed rice (probably wild rice and brown rice) and nut stuffing with possibly a few frozen cranberries thrown in for good measure. I'll probably improvise my own variation on the theme and see what else I can throw in, but Chow.com has an actual recipe. (I'd skip the brown sugar, personally, but each to their own.)

I'm *also* looking forward to our usual Christmas dish - our family recipe for walnut pâté en croute.

[brewsternorth]

Oo, the spiced cranberries in port sounds intriguing. What sort of spices go into that?

[gramina]

It's what I think of as "the sweet winter spices" -- pretty much "to taste" (except it's really smell).

A bottle of port, a bunch? couple cups? of sugar, and cranberries such that they're about covered. (They'll float, but the pan should be fairly full.)

Let that start heating, since you'll want to cook it till the cranberries are done and all explodey. Add cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, mace, allspice, or whatever of that general family of spices you like, till it smells good to you.

When the cranberries have pretty much popped, or at least are soft, pour out into a serving dish you can put in the fridge. Depending on the amount of pectin in the cranberries, this may turn out to be a jelly or a sauce. People who think they hate cranberries actually voluntarily eat it.

(My dad made this recipe. Procedure. Whatever.)

[rhi]

Yowsa! I help with dinner for 15 and that's enough for me! What's 5-cup salad?

[ilyena_sylph]

Hehehe... It's plenty.

I loathe the stuff, but my family eats it like it's going to be stolen.

1 cup crushed (or chunked) pineapple, drained
1 cup mandarin oranges, drained
1 cup sour cream
1 cup sweetened flaked coconut
1 cup mini marshmallows

Mix all ingredients, put into the fridge to chill overnight to let the marshmallows melt.

I forgot to mention. When made for T-Day, it's normally fifteen-cup salad, but we still call it five-cup.

[donutsweeper]

Even though it's a small gathering I'll be making:

(for munching before meal)
roasted carrot dip with homemade pitas

(the meal)
Turkey and gravy
pan roasted vegetables
maple sugar baked carrots
challah and another bread
cornbread dressing
pear jello salad

(dessert)
double-layer pumpkin pie
shoofly pie
triple chocolate ooey gooey bars

and I am forgetting something... hmmmm

[morgan]

I'm not making the full meal for once this year, so I'll get to relax and enjoy what I am making to make them each really good dishes. I will be making:

Maple Glazed Ham
Pumpkin Cheesecake
Cranberry Relish

[amadi]

It's just two of us, and I'm a vegetarian, so our meal is a little off from the traditional.

- Cornish Game Hen & Traditional Sage Stuffing (not for me)
- Chorizo & Wild Rice Stuffed Acorn Squash (for me, veggie chorizo)
- Sweet corn spoonbread
- Baked yams
- Southwestern Succotash (Corn, limas, red peppers, chipotle pepper)
- Roasted Brussels Sprouts & Chrysanthemum Onions
- Cauliflower-Fennel gratin
- Cranberry jelly, from the can, in the round cylinder shape
- Pumpkin Pie

[hazel]

I'm in New Zealand and we don't celebrate Thanksgiving, so my favourite holiday meal is Christmas, which when I and my flat have hosted it consists of:

- scorched almonds (for breakfast - scorched almonds are coated in chocolate, and are Traditional)
- things on toast for breakfast
... and then basically a series of points during the day from about 2pm to about 8pm at which we eat:
- bread and dips (oils, dukkah, rock salt, pesto)
- cold roast ham
- salad
- barbeque (steak, shrimps, mushrooms, onion) (weather dependant)
- nut roast
- roast vegetables (potato, kumara [sweet potato], carrots, pumpkin)
- spinach and feta pastries
- Christmas cake
- usually some kind of biscuits [cookies] with chocolate in them
- trifle
- cheesecake

And drink a lot of wine! And have eggs the next morning for breakfast, along with many, many leftovers! \o/

[I find it really weird how many people seem to put sweet potatoes in sweet dishes. They're pretty exclusively treated as a savoury food here. Regional traditions for the win!]

[cypher]

What a fun question!

My partner and I are hosting Thanksgiving for some of our friends this year. We're making a ham (with a grape-mustard glaze) and this lentil-based shepherd's pie (some of our guests are vegetarian), and a pumpkin pie from my great grandmother's recipe.

Our guests are bringing other dishes to add to the table, including buttermilk biscuits, a garlic-green bean casserole, dressing, and apple pie.

\o/

[cypher]

...Wow, that sounds delicious! I'm going to have to try that as an addition to our menu. Thank you for sharing!

[serene]

We had our Thanksgiving early, because I was participating in a gluten-free-Thanksgiving blog event. We're not gluten-free, but I thought it'd be fun to do my mom's traditional Thanksgiving meal, but do it gluten-free. The menu's at http://www.momfoodproject.com/2010/11/15/gluten-free-mom-food-thanksgiving/ but it's basically turkey and all the trimmings.

[serene]

I *much* prefer my sweet potatoes savory. I probably belong in New Zealand. :-)

[serene]

(Oh, and for my work potluck, I took two pot pies: one chicken/turkey, and one vegan with tofu and chickpea gravy.)

[hazel]

I really like to wrap them up in tinfoil, stick them in a low-burning fire for an hour or so, and then eat them with a little salt and lots of butter. Or else cut into wedges and served with salt and lemon juice. I can't really imagine eating them as part of a sweet dish.

[capybara_cafe]

....Can I come to your house? lol

[acelightning]

There's just the two of us, and my husband has to work that day, and as usual we don't know when he'll be getting home. Everything can be reheated if necessary.

I've ordered a little boneless turkey breast, in the 2 to 3 pound range; I'm picking that up Tuesday morning, and then I'm going to brine it. I'm allergic to onions and garlic, so the brining mixture contains salt, maple syrup, sherry, and a bunch of whole spices and herbs in a cloth bag - allspice, peppercorns, rosemary, ginger, one dried chile de arbol, and whatever else seems to want to go into the mixture. When I roast it, I brush it with a mixture of sherry, dark soy sauce, and melted butter, and I put a little water in the bottom of the pan so I'll have enough juice to baste it with, and (I hope) to make gravy. I'll have a can of turkey gravy handy Just In Case.

With the turkey, I'll serve my World-Famous Three-Rice Stuffing With Walnuts And Sherry, cooked on the stove because it's rather difficult to stuff a rolled and tied turkey breast (I guess that makes it "dressing"?). Also yeast rolls, kernel corn and/or green beans, and homemade whole-berry cranberry sauce.

Pumpkin pie with whipped cream for dessert, of course. I make my own pie crust, but the filling is ridiculously simple. One small can of pumpkin, one can of sweetened condensed milk, two eggs, spices ad lib., and a little vanilla. (Condensed milk works even better than evaporated milk for anything custard-ish.)

Despite the rather sparse menu, we're still going to have leftovers.

[yvi]

Well, I hope there'll be duck for Christmas. Since one of my great-uncles just delivered some of his to my family, I think there might be.