Darryl Shannon wrote:
>
> Well, Thanksgiving is coming up. What are the various brinellers going
> to have? I'm making everything for Thanksgiving this year, and here
> are my recommendations for y'all:
I'm not going to be making anything for Thanksgiving dinner. I'm
supposed to pick up some pumpkin pies from Marie Callendar's on
Wednesday to bring, because I don't have the time to do the piecrust
right this year. (Now, if my mom were here, we'd make a couple of
pies. She could do the piecrust and help with the rest.) I'm making a
dip to go with supper after the football game (dinner is supposed to be
over in time for everyone to drive across town to watch the football
game at a different house from where dinner is being served).
The dip consists of a pint of sour cream and a packet of Lawry's
spaghetti sauce seasoning. Stir the dip into the sour cream and let
stand in the refrigerator for at least 24 hours.
> Roasted Turkey.
Dan's Aunt Amaryllis will be fixing that. (At his Aunt Bonnie's house,
which is where dinner will be, but we'll watch the game at Aunt
Amaryllis's house.)
> Gravy.
Aunt Amaryllis. (Although she appreciates it if someone else can help
with stirring it during the thickening. My sister did that the last
time she had Thanksgiving here.)
> Stuffing. Cube up some sourdough bread, or other interesting old bread.
Blegh. I'm going to have to agree with Adam, Marvin and Rob on this --
cornbread stuffing is the way to go. And if you don't like cornbread
stuffing, you'll just have to come down to Austin some year and taste
how it comes out when Amaryllis makes it. (She's making it Wednesday
morning. I have to drive my mother-in-law over to her house so she can
help with tasting it, or my MIL will have to borrow my husband's car for
the morning.)
> Mashed potatoes.
Yum. My MIL is making a potato dish on Wednesday to take. I think I'd
be happier with good mashed potatoes, but I'm not the one making
potatoes this year, so I can't complain. (When I complained about the
pie situation, I got slated to bring the pumpkin pies. Nobody else
seems to feel strongly about having pumpkin pie except maybe Aunt Mary
Jane, who wasn't in on the division of cooking meeting.)
> Sweet potatoes.
Sounds yummy, but not going to happen here. I guess someone overdid it
on the sweet potatoes at some point so there's a temporary moratorium on
them.
> Vegetarian Entree: Baked Squash.
Sounds yummy. No vegetarians coming as far as I know. (I wonder how my
sister will do having Thanksgiving with her boyfriend's parents this
year, though, now that you mention it....)
> Cranberry sauce. A bag of whole raw cranberries, a whole orange
> including skin cut up, and ~1/2 cup sugar to taste. Puree in food
> processor. Have a couple cans of jell-style cranberry sauce available
> too.
I don't like it when there's orange in with the cranberry. My mom used
to make orange-less cranberry sauce from scratch. That was *really*
yummy. Now we settle for the whole-berry sauce out of the can.
> Dilled Pickled Beans. You did make these last summer, didn't you?
> Pack green beans into pint* jars, add garlic cloves (lots of garlic
> cloves), fresh dill heads, and your favorite pickling spices
> (peppercorns, chile flakes, mustard seeds, whole cloves, bay leaf,
> etc), and add vinegar and salt brine leaving 1 cm head room. Treat
> cans in boiling water bath for 10 minutes. The vinegar makes this high
> acid, so you don't need a pressure cooker, just boiling water. The
> beans come out spicy and crunchy, and the pickled garlic is delicious
> too.
Yum. Takes me back to when my mom used to make pickles out of green
cherry tomatoes after the first frost. Those were yummy. I think that
all I'm going to see in the way of pickled stuff will be baby dills out
of a jar.
That's about all the commenting I'm going to do on this right now. I
need to check on Sammy -- he's asleep, but he's hit that stage where he
wants his MOMMY which is something of an ego-boost, but also somewhat
draining. I think I'd be going totally nuts right now if my MIL weren't
here to be helping out some. (My FIL gets in Tuesday night, my BIL
arrives Wednesday, about 3 hours later than he plans to. We're
abandoned by everyone on Saturday.)
Julia
