Thanksgiving is just over a week away and I, for one, am SO excited. I’m looking forward to the cooking and the beautiful table. I’m excited to see the family members who will be coming to break bread with us. I’m excited for the Black Friday ads that will be spread out across the living room floor come Thursday night. Oh, and I am so excited for the mashed potatoes. Mashed potatoes, you see, are my favorite food and it’s been a terribly long time since I’ve made any myself. And now that Thanksgiving is so close, I might just as well wait until the big day. I admit that I’m already salivating over the thought of them though.
Anyway…
I’ve been having fun playing around with the menu. I already bought my turkey even. He’s a 17 pounder from Trader Joe’s. I went the ‘all-natural’ route this year. For 99 cents a pound I picked up a fresh young turkey without all the antibiotics and yada yada yada. 100% vegetarian feed too. Ironic isn’t it?
I’m trying some new things this year. The recipes come courtesy of The Pioneer Woman. I’m truly in awe of the recipes she posts. Actually, I’m in awe of the photographs of the food she posts. You will be too when you see them.
But this whole menu planning thing got me to wondering what kinds of unique dishes, or perhaps just unique to Thanksgiving dishes, other families will be serving.
Our family has spent the previous two Thanksgivings with our now temporarily-Texan friends, Kelly and Geoff. Until we met them I never understood how people could spend holidays away from their families. Now I get it though. Good friends are really more like family than anything else. Only they don’t bring along a cheek-pinching, too- much-perfume-wearin’, crazy great aunt who insists on calling you Darlene. I actually don’t have one of those, but you get the idea.
Anyway, Kelly’s Thanksgiving dinner included a few things I’d never seen served before. I’m still not sure if it’s because she comes from Delaware and they do things differently there or because she’s a really picky eater and she expanded the menu so as to have a bit more to choose from.
The first year we celebrated with them at their house and she asked me to bring mac’n'cheese. I have a love/hate relationship with mac’n'cheese (love the taste, hate the calories) so I was thrilled to have an “excuse” to eat it unabashedly. She also served green salad, which, though it’s a very typical food, has never been a part of any other Thanksgiving dinner I’ve attended.
Not that the foods we include in our dinner are typical either. Sure, my Grandma, (or mom, depending on who was doing the cooking) made the green bean casserole and the marshmallow topped sweet potatoes. Stuffing and potatoes and gravy and cranberry sauce from the can all made an appearance too. But somewhere along the line somebody got a recipe for a cranberry salad and now it too has become a standard part of our dinner. And really, what’s not to love about cranberries, apples, cool whip, celery and chopped walnuts all coming together in a dessert that somehow makes it onto the table disguised as a salad?
So now you see why I’m curious. What strange dish makes it to your Thanksgiving table?
Inquiring minds want to know…
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As I wrote in my Thankful Thursday post last week, my Me-Maw’s Pea Casserole, is an absolute staple in my book. I am not a huge fan of peas, but Thanksgiving would not be complete without it each year. In fact, that is my contribution this year.
Great post…my Me-Maw ALSO always had a green salad (simple, it is)!
You’re cooking for Turkey Day? Brave woman. I have never cooked a Thanksgiving meal. Nope! Never. And I hope to keep it that way. :-) But I can’t wait to see how your new recipes turn out.
Hey Darlene, The cranberry salad was on our Thanksgiving Table as long as I can remember, Grandma will have to tell us where she got that recipe. I can hardly wait to get back to Tucson for your thanksgiving feast.
We usually serve a pretty typical Thanksgiving dinner now but growing up in a filipino household there was always something interesting on the table…lumpia (spring rolls), pancit (noodles w/ veggies), jello (?).
We’re hosting this year too and I’m going to make a honey-brined turkey breast…no one ever wants the turkey legs here. I’m also going to make a yummy ‘adult’ version of mac n cheese (from Cooking Light) instead of mashed potatoes. Good luck!
I think we’re pretty standard. Turkey, mashed potatoes, homemade noodles, stuffing, cranberries, sweet potato casserole. Can’t stand that marshmellow topped stuff – yuck! recipe will be blogged about in the future. ;) It’s a very carb-heavy meal!
First — I’d love the recipe to that cranberry salad, because it sounds delish! Second, I don’t know that we serve anything that out of the ordinary. We make stuffed mushrooms, which might be a little atypical. In years past I’ve also made a carrot souffle that is to die for (it’s got enough sugar in it to send someone into a diabetic coma). It’s one of those “dessert disguised as a vegetable side dish” items.
We have cranberry salad,too. Its not every year but most years. The strangest thing is that we have sauerkraut with our turkey, mashed potatoes and stuffing. Its cooked with the turkey neck and chopped onions. Sounds odd but its delish with the meal.
I don’t cook except for the desserts. I just provide the place. Enjoy your Thanksgiving!!! =)
We’re always somewhere else for Thanksgiving and I like my Thanksgiving food best, so I make the Thanksgiving meal I really want for my family at Christmas. I do an awesome homemade mac & cheese. We have two dishes of stuffing – one cooked in the bird, and one not cooked in the bird for the vegetarians that come. Green salad with pears and walnuts. Sweet potatoes, but not with marshmallows. Roasted brussel sprouts. Roasted beets with fennel. For dessert … pumpkin bread pudding, this Martha Stewart tangerine cake that is THE BEST, and about 20 different kinds of cookies with ice cream.
My sister-in-law had noodle kugel and a fruity jello-mold at every holiday meal.
Black Bing Cherry Jello Salad – a double, triple batch! Ashley also likes to have deviled eggs although I keep telling her they are for Easter.
I used to make the sweet potato casserole and the pumpkin pie just for Jeff & I.
I’ve also made your cranberry salad the last 2 years.
I adore mashed potatoes, too…I could forego everything else and eat nothing but that. Stuffing is a close runner up, though. I think our dishes are pretty straightforward, although I’m pretty sure my mom will throw a salad into the mix to try to “healthy” things up a bit. I am so looking forward to this favorite meal of mine – and can’t wait to hear about yours in a week or two!
I meant to ask you…which recipes from The Pioneer Woman are you trying out? Her photos and recipes always look so tempting…there are several I want to try out myself.
Mashed potatoes are the bomb! They were not a staple at my family’s meals for the holidays, but they are at our house! Potato salad is probably one of the oddest things on our table at Thanksgiving. I posted my menu on my blog.
WE do all the regular things but this weekend I was asked to bring Creamed Potatoes to the the church Thanksgiving feast. “Creamed Potatoes?” I asked, “What’s that?”
And she looked at me like I had three heads.
Apparently, in the south Creamed Potatoes are mashed potatoes.
We have all the regular foods at Tgiving. We are pretty thankful that there’s no religious affiliation and therefore no reason to break out the Jewish holiday-ish food and we get to just gorge on Tgiving stuff. Although this morning, my husband said we have no pasta dish for Tgiving. Pasta? On Tgiving? I’ve seriously never heard of such a thing. Am looking though for some new recipes, so if you have any, feel free to pass them my way!
I know I’m late commenting, but my brother’s new girlfriend who Mexican brought tamales and spanish rice to dinner. They were both very spicy, but somehow fit in well with everything else.