f13.net

I am not from North America, as a few of you probably know, but someone I deeply care for is and she's staying with me in Roma for a while. Happens that she'll be here for thanksgiving too and she proposed to have turkey and all.

I'm all up for turkey, but then I started researching about what thanksgiving is, what is people giving thank for (and to whom), and what and when the celebration started. And I got depressed, so I'm not sure it's a good idea to celebrate it anymore. I'm really confused, I'm sure I shouldn't look too much into it in the XXI century, but I'm uncomfortable since I realized the Native Americans point of view.

Care to share your thoughts on it and help me have my first happy turkey?

Do like everyone else and don't think about it overmuch and just accept the excuse to hang out with friends/family and have a proper holiday feast.  :)

Don't look too deeply into any holidays, really. The whole 'christ wasn't born in december thing' is always fun for a family get-together.

But yeah, have some turkey and a good meal, enjoy time with friends and family, look over the past year and be thankful for all that you have and is good in your life.

And if you feel really bad about what happened to those indians dumb enough to make treaties with white people, consider the modern indians raking in millions of untaxed dollars from stupid white people in their casinos.

No one actually sits around a fire a talks about how many polio blankets they traded or how well they performed at the world series of the most dangerous game. Its just a vacation excuse and one od those times when families get fat and drunk.

Its not about that. Its about your friend there, being there. In fact, invite more people you care about.

Thanksgiving isn't about it's history. It's about yours and the family, friends and people you love who touch your life every day. Spend a day with them in the warmth of a house filled with the smells of good food and the sounds of conversations. Celebrate your time together and be content. There's plenty of other days in the year to be cynical and worry about the world, where it's been, where it is and where it's going. It's ok to take one of them to just be happy.

Smallpox blankets came much later. Save them for Easter.

This.

One year I had Thanksgiving Sonic with my mom and it was still great.  It's not about the meal, but enjoying the time with those you love.  Turkey and all the fixings are traditional for a lot of families though, so it reminds us of good times with the family.  Nostalgia and tryptophan.

So don't worry about it's historical relevance.  Think of it as a new tradition which celebrates your friendship.

Key Elements for a United States Thanksgiving:

1) Turkey.  At least one.
2) Pumpkin-based or sweet-potato-based food.
3) An assortment of other foods which are entirely carbohydrates.
4) Enough soft furniture for everyone to lay on.
5) Football.

Be sure to have at least twice as much food as would normally be consumed.  Eat until you are in physical pain, then sleep it off while trying to watch football.

Despite the fact that you all celebrate it a month late, I agree that the whole point of it is family. I've celebrated American Thanksgiving with American friends, and really, noone puts any historical significance on it - it's a good excuse to get friends and family together, watch football, and eat too much. They leave the historical stuff for July 4th.

Heck, I certainly don't let my general disdain for Christianity and Organized religion stop me from celebrating Christmas with my family.

Besides, this girl you care deeply about will be so impressed that you might score.  That is something to be very, very thankful for.

Right.  Don't forget that all the food makes people sleepy.

I don't see stuffing or dressing on your list. Just mentioning carbs in not nearly good enough. Philistine.

Thanksgiving is about 4 days off, hanging out with family and friends, and eating until you are fit to burst. When I was younger it was also about hitting the bar after dinner and drinking Wild Turkey (always very cheap on special) until I was nearly blind.

I was not sure if I wanted to explain what that was... no idea what he knows, but good call there.  Plus my experience is all Old South variant and I have to translate for you carpetbaggers anyway.

As others have noted, stuffing and gravy are important to go with the turkey.

You may substitute sitting around and talking, watching a movie, or playing a board game if you are not a fan of football.

If you do the "dinner" early in the day, a turkey sandwich makes a fine snack, along with another slice of pie, should you be capable of eating again later the same day.

If you don't watch football on Thanksgiving, you might as well skip the gravy and move to California with the other weirdos. :why_so_serious:

Haha. Well you know, she came all the way down to Roma just for me, so scoring stopped being an issue a while ago  :pedobear:

That said, I don't know guys. I am sure you all got I am really confused, not trying any kind of subtle flame here. And yes, you are all being reassuring and I am kinda convinced.
What disturbed me is that I tried thinking of something similar in Italy and while, obviously, I can't find anything like that, I wonder if I could let a certain unhappy event happened in the past to become a happy friends-and-family occasion. I am not pointing fingers at the USA, it's a known fact that I hate my land more than any other place. We had Mussolini and we now have Berlusconi, no one is as stupid as the people here, and our history is dirtier and bloodier than yours. So I wonder, if for some crazy reason the day of the march on Rome (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_on_Rome) were a traditional national holiday around here, no matter how spoiled of its origins, no matter how forgotten they could be, I couldn't celebrate it.

I realize it's a terribly inadequate parallelism, terribly. I just used it to point out the problem I have with the origins of celebrations, they are hard to forget: in this case from what I read, and I'm humbly open to being ridiculed for reading the wrong stuff (or the stuff wrong), but in the face of history, didn't thanksgiving ended up being a celebration of the colonisation (and what it produced)? The fact that no one thinks about it doesn't really change its meaning, does it?

I guess it's my usual problem, I empathise too much. But what would I say if my friend was an American Indian? "Forget about it, it's the past. No one really cares about it anymore"?





FAKE EDIT: Among the many things I read, this one (http://www.oyate.org/resources/shortthanks.html) really, and especially the quoted sentence, makes my soon-to-be-eaten turkey kinda bitter.



Once again, forgive me for stepping into traditions that don't belong to me. I just wanted to share my confusion.

It's important to keep in mind that very little we do here makes any goddamn sense at all.

Well, if your government performs genocide then you have to expect a certain amount of propaganda to come with it.  I mean, read up on the current state of Indian Affairs.  Comparatively speaking, I think most people would rather be any other ethnic group in this country.  So, yea, bad stuff for five hundred years and counting, but I can't do a god-damned thing about it, can I?

As a Left Coaster, most of the football is done before we end up eating, so it isn't as traditional for us. We have it on in the background, of course- we are at least partially civilized. Thankfully the NFL came to the rescue and spoiled the Thanksgivings of hundreds of its employees by adding yet another game to the schedule.

Also- The Cowboys and Lions should play each other and let the rest of the league have a shot at hosting a Turkey Day game.

Another car trip with the infant.   :awesome_for_real: So looking forward to an hour and a half of unhappy, crying baby.

At least we're not cooking.

I don't like the Cowboys nearly enough to give them one free win every year.


That's the spirit!

I wouldn't even bother with the turkey if the local grocery store didn't give us a free one every year.  Maybe she doesn't care, like me.  I can't seem to get interested in holidays.  I expect that if you feed her yummy food and you're nice to her, she'll enjoy herself regardless of whether it's turkey and football or pasta and a good film.  

Ugh. We were relatively lucky- ours tends to fall asleep in the car. Now that I have said that I am sure he will scream all the way to Bellingham on Thursday.

From the original message, it sounded like she was the one who had the whole turkey idea.

Do like the rest of us do.  Change the meaning of the holiday to something personal that you can get on board with.  Maybe it's the day that we slaughter all the hated turkeys, exacting our revenge for hundreds of years of having turkeys around doing turkey-like things!  The fuckers, we'll show 'em!  

Don't listen to anyone who tells you that turkey is not an integral part of Thanksgiving.  These people are communists and/or zombies.

About cooking, this year I have had pumpkin pie added to my list.  That's what happens when you make a pumpkin pie that makes people's eyes roll back in their heads.  The secret?  Very unhealthy ingredients.

Other things which mean Thanksgiving to me:
gravy
fried okra
turkey "fingers"
cornbread pan dressing, normal and with salt substitute, turkey and chicken
squash casserole (my assigned dish)
fried chicken
fried green tomatoes
ham
macaroni-and-cheese
deviled eggs
snap beans
lima beans
various field peas
corn on the cob
mashed potatoes
banana pudding
various layer cakes
lemon cake

I'd agree with Samwise.  The only time that grocery stores even have turkey in stock is Thanksgiving.  Maybe there are some places where people eat turkey all year, but it's not in the South.

Turkey is okay, but I'm more a fan of Southern Maryland stuffed ham - but that's more of an all holidays type dish.

On Thanksgiving, I'd reclassify ham as a side-dish.

My inlaws do.  Mainly it's because my mother-in-law has like 4 total things that she cooks and a turkey breast is one of them.

Luckily, my family does a better Thanksgiving all around.  I could subsist off the side dishes alone.

You can have Thanksgiving without commemorating Indian slaughter just like you can have Christmas without any Jesus, don't worry about it so much.

Our Thanksgiving is always at my aunt's place that used to be a commune, all of their old commune friends come back (well lots of them anyway) plus whatever random assorted odd people they invite, plus family. It makes for kind of a  :awesome_for_real: mix of people, usually about 30-35 total. I don't think I've ever watched football on Thanksgiving? Maybe the one time we went to NJ to have Thanksgiving with Sjofn's family.


Gah, that's almost as bad as when I lived in PA and the only time the grocery stores ever had lamb was for Passover.  :uhrr:

I eat turkey all year, but almost always in sandwich or burger form.

Yeg, your list is missing cranberry sauce.  And pecan pie.  I am suspicious.

HAM.

I was wondering how we made it this far without a single mention of cranberry sauce.

Cranberry sauce needs to die in a car fire.  If Satan had to bring a dish to Thanksgiving dinner, that's what he'd bring.

Falconeer, weighing in on your initial worry rather than what to do for Thanksgiving (silly colonial holiday, who eats sweet potato with marshmallow? Fiends that's who!) it's possible to have fun on a holiday by ignoring the darker history that holiday may have. Guy Fawkes day in Britain is pretty much a celebration of destroying a Catholic plot and a massive propaganda tool that celebrated burning Catholics at stakes by the Jacobite monarchy. I'm a Catholic and frankly can't think of a single person who's ever been offended by Guy Fawkes day (except for those pricks somewhere that burn an effigy of the Pope every year, do not know why they carried on with that one). It's an excuse to light bonfires and have fireworks, don't put any more thought into it than that. The history of the holiday needn't be important so long as it gives you an excuse (or reason) to spend time with people you love and indulge. Hell divorce it from it's sordid past and make no reference to America even, just use it as an opportunity to give thanks for family food and an appropriate sport of your choice (really people, if he stays up to watch handegg he won't be eating till 3am).

Meh, if he wants to get hung up on internet illiterati propaganda then anything you say here isn't going to stop him.

Hey, some people shared some food with some lost and hungry colonists and to commemorate that we celebrate with a day of thanks for all that we love in life.

That then, over the next 4 or 500 years, other shit happened really has nothing to do with it.

Falconeer - would it make you feel better if I mentioned that my great Grandmother was a full blooded native, and we still celebrate Thanksgiving?

That quote you posted sounds like something you'd find on the same site about how Halloween candy is cursed by a coven of witches.

Yes, the colonization of the new world (hell, pretty much the colonization of everywhere in the world that was colonized) included behaviour that we are now ashamed of, but hey - all we can do now is try to prevent that kind of thing from recurring.

My understanding of American Thanksgiving (Canadians celibrate it in Oct, on the day Collumbus landed) is that it is meant as a re-enactment of a big feast between the Pilgrims and some natives. In other words, celebrating the good times between the two peoples - before they started butchering one another.

I like canned cranberry sauce. Especially if it plops out in to the bowl like a congealed red monolith  :grin:

Craisins.   :awesome_for_real:

Forget that silly canned stuff. 

SUP BITCHES WE GONNA BURN DOWN THE CRANBERRY SAUCE FACTORY TONITE - -  R U IN MOTHERFUCKER ??

I did forget pecan pie.  In fact, the entire pie family was absent, particularly apple and peach.  Mind you, most of that list was what we had all at once.

Yes, everyone please remember the holiday (south of Canada) is about the Indians helping the Pilgrims not entirely die off during their first winter.  So, you can think about that as a posthumous 'screw you' from them.

Nothing beats fresh ripe cranberries, and few things are worse than the nuggets of unjoy Ocean Spray has foisted on the nation as cranberries. Even that canned jellied stuff is better than people's attempts at homemade using underripe bitter old berries.

This. Even if the event upon which it is based is entirely historically inaccurate, the myth is the important part. Somewhere, at some point, European colonists didn't immediately butcher the natives, and maybe even treated them as people. Unlikely, sure, but it may have happened sometime, somewhere.

Oh shit, that's me literally, but I like gravy.

Actually initially the colonists did indeed get one fairly well with the natives, partly because they really didn't have any reason not to (unlike the Conquistadors most colonists didn't turn up with the attitude of, "Ah ha! This is all ours and now we shall start shooting you!" The pilgrims weren't first Europeans to arrive in America, hell one of the first Indians to greet the pilgrims spoke English having actually spent several years over there (he went over with some traders and eventually returned). Slavery wasn't really practised then (at least not by most Northern Europeans) so they weren't kidnapping people or anything. It wasn't until 50/100 years later that Europeans were established enough and felt the need to expand/claim to the land that they started really clashing with the natives.

Really? The Ocean Spray baggies are not really that different from the local brand except they're more expensive.

Ham.

And Musselmans Red Spice Apple Rings.  Fuck cranberry sauce in it's ear.

You are not fucking human.

Huh?  You can find cranberries NOT from Ocean Spray?  Lies.

That's not 'sauce', that's Jello.

We are Filipino's and we've always celebrated Thanksgiving.  For us its mainly a time of the year where we all try to get together for a huge family meal.

We even pretty much eat all the traditional stuff.  Like we always have:

Turkey
Ham
Stuffing (sausage and corn bread)
Homemade cranberry sauce
Green Bean Casserole
Mashed potatos
Corn Casserole
Roasted Sweet Potato w/maple syrup glaze
And assorted pies (pumpkin, cherry, pecan)

But some Filipino food is fricken awesome and should be added to that list.

Haha, we eat that all year long.

I'm going to try to convince the family to deep-fry the turkey this year, it's supposed to make it incredibly moist and delicious.  Top that with stuffing, homeade gravy, sweet potatoes with marshmallows on top, rolls, and a 2-day coma, it should be a good thanksgiving.

On the Indian shit:

You can't really lump them all together, there were so many different tribes of native americans that had vastly different cultures trying to lump all of them together would be akin to lumping an entire continent together.  In Texas alone, there were 4 or 5 /vastly/ different cultures of native americans in the 1800s, treating them all the same is just as offensive to the peaceful hunter-gatherer types that lived in the brushland in the south as it is to the various brutal fucking tribes that roamed the plains.  It's hard to find sympathy for a tribe that regularly kidnapped, raped, and tortured people just for being there.  One of the favorite methods of torture of the plains indians of texas was to cut a small incision in the gut, pull out a length of intestine, and stake it (and the person) to the ground, so that the various scavenger animals would come and literally pull them apart from the inside before eating the rest.

Deep frying is OK, but if you really want it to be good you should be brining it and smoking it imo.

Deep fried turkey is EXCELLENT.  However it's pretty damn dangerous.  Our first attempt didn't go all that awesome. 

Also it lets you cook a 15ish pound turkey in like an hour.

As has come up in a few politics threads, I have a chunk of Native American blood and sometimes identify that way.  But the Thanksgiving/Columbus Day guilt trip is not something I go for.  Outside of the Italian-American community nobody gives a shit about Columbus Day, and Thanksgiving's ritual observations of family and acceptance of your good fortune are a good thing regardless of their mythical origins.  Have the turkey and trimmings, be thankful for the good things in your life, and let the activists find something *useful* to do.

--Dave

We'll definitely be doing it outside if we do, all of the "we burned our house down" stories are a damned good reason to not attempt it on the stove.

Make sure it is thawed for at least 24 hours. Frozen turkeys = bomb when dropped into the fryer. Even with proper thawing it is still dangerous. My step grandfather has done deep fried turkeys for as long as i can remember, and even with his preparation and skill, i remember a couple fireballs in the back yard.

We have a big Thanksgiving lunch each year at work and we always deep fry a bunch of turkeys because it's the fastest and easiest way to cook turkey without having a real kitchen.  It's always done outside, which seems to me like the only sane way to do it.

The final result isn't that different from oven-roasted turkey; maybe a little moister since all the juice is locked in.  The one thing I don't love about it is that the skin becomes inedible (it gets too crispy and tough to chew).

and... is that a bad thing?

When is jello ever a bad thing?

But why would you have turkey when you could have goose instead? Then you can also have goose soup, and goose fat to roast potatoes with and cook all sorts of other foods with. Why? Why?!

Point me to the nearest goose, shopkeep.

Ha ha, it's funny that you think Americans are willing to try new food.

I *love* goose, but it is hard to find here, harder to work with than turkey cooking-wise, and also lacks the whole connection to the 'original' event that turkey theoretically has.

If we have it here at all, it is more of a Christmas thing, or something you see on a high end restaurant menu. Duck is more common but still not very common.

If Satan came to dinner he would cook the Turkey, because there is nothing worse than dry turkey meat.

That is why you must brine!

Haven't you read Dickens? You stick your head out the window and yell at any passing kid to fetch you the biggest goose from the butcher. See literature can teach lessons, feel free to use this example if kids ever ask you why they should read the classics.

Try to find and watch the "Good Eats" episode on this. Alton setup this special rig to lower the turkey into the fryer. :awesome_for_real:

I'll post pictures of our very Italian and not-so-American turkey then. Please keep in mind that finding the right stuff to cook "American" is hell here. The friend who tried to do chilli for superbowl in 2008 gave up and left the supermarket in tears, and everything we have here, including broth, has just been branded "different" by the thanksgiving girl. I'm sure it'll be delicious (she is an amazing cook), but absolutely blasphemous.

Heh I have seen AB's deep fried turkey episode a couple of times. He goes a bit overboard, but it is a good setup.

I only have a bit of turkey during Thanksgiving dinner. I do most of my turkey consumption over the extended weekend in the form of delicious turkey sandwiches. Complete with cranberries and stuffing when available.

REAL Cranberry sauce (with no goddamn orange peels in it!) is a fantastic treat that I look forward to every year. My mom makes awesome sauce, but always complains about how long it takes in that mom way.  You know the one, where you offer to make it if she'd give you the recipe but she sighs and says "No, I'll do it."  :oh_i_see:

Our two other traditional every-year dishes are orange jello w/ sherbet mixed-in and lime jello with cream cheese.  Delicious.   The rest we mix up. Some years we have turkey, some we have prime rib. I think we had duck one year.

Cranberry sauce is one of my favorite things to make because although it takes a long time, it takes almost no work.  At least the way I make it, which is to throw stuff in a pot and then wander away for however long it takes.

I'm not going home this year, instead staying in DC to attempt to have dinner with some classmates...I hope someone knows how to do turkey, cause I can't cook for shit.

Also, cranberry sauce is the demon and should die in a fryer fire.

*points up*

Honk, honk.

I think they used to feed Canada Geese to the homeless up here.  Two birds, one stone.

Ever since I heard about this I have been unable to eat goose meat.

There is one giant fucking flaw in Ingmar's Thanksgiving. Wait, one and a half. The one GIANT flaw is that his uncle makes this horrible, overly busy stuffing that I cannot stand to look at, let alone eat, and it leaves a giant stuffing-shaped hole in my Thanksgiving.

The half a flaw is they eat at a real dinner time (6 pm-ish) and so there is no second dinner like there is with my family (we eat at like ... two. And then again at 8 or so.).


EDIT: Their turkey is fucking fantastic, though. Brining is the True Way to cook turkey, I'm a total convert on that score.

:uhrr:

its

My Aunt makes a killer stuffing, but I know it's probably just like store bought croutons and Bob Evan's sage sausage.  However, I eat that stuff up.  She even makes extra just for me to take home.   :heart:

I am usually STARVING by then too, it sucks. :(

That just makes the food taste better you know!

This just says Thanksgiving, going that extra step for a loved one. 

As the cook of the house, one of the best parts of Thanksgiving are the leftovers.  AND that huge turkey carcass to make soup with. 
If I don't feel like making stock with right away I can toss it in the freezer and do it later.   To make it even better I got a duck that I
will roast mostly to add to the stock pot.

Thanksgiving is about fun with others. Eat grilled cheese if that's what you think makes it awesome.

Personally, I think turkey usually sucks. It's incredibly easy to fuck up. I'd rather eat a giant beef roast with all the same trimmings.

Look.  If you start eating anytime after 2pm, you simply don't have enough time to gorge yourself properly.  You have 364 OTHER days in which to be hungry.

Cranberry Sauce, but it has to be from a can. It has to have ridges and be cut into quarter inch, perfectly round slices.

You are a disgusting man.

I live on Cape Cod. I walk past three commercial bogs on my lunchtime walk. But I really have no gripes with ocean spray's baggies of cranberries. Just paw through the bags and pick the best ripest looking ones, which ever they're from. Sometimes they're spray, sometimes they're the local.

That's what we did at my parents. Not because it tastes awesome, but rather because my mom sucked at cooking. Sadly, she won't accept me or my dad to do any cooking (she's Assyrian and German, suddenly mules don't look as stubborn compared to that  combo :oh_i_see:).

One thing I always liked for smaller turkey days though was Cornish hens (and maybe that would be a good option for you Falc). For 2-3 people these are wonderful in place of a turkey. I've been in some spots where this was the best option for T-day dinner and it always turned out great.

Also, for me and another reason why I love this holiday, is we play a nice game of football (between 8v8-11v11). My buddy's relatives have a ~60yard football field setup in their back yard with 2 bars outside, 2 bars inside (all open at 7am sharp, so after Wednesday's bars we just pass out on the closest couch to them ~5am) and some chili stations. Good times and lots of (painful) fun with local high school jerseys (he donates quite a bit each year to the schools, sadly no alumni cheerleader squads have been provided yet) and a big ass Bud Light inflatable can, all before the first dinner ~1-2pm.  :awesome_for_real:

Sorry, what? Your friends are wrong. July 4th is about getting drunk, cooking on the grill, and capping off a great day by blowing shit up. If your friends have you convinced that we even talk about George Washington and the founding of this nation for ten pioseconds, they have totally put the  :awesome_for_real: on you.

The only thing that I have seen done consistently, across multiple states, on the 4th of July is that the national anthem is played, and everyone stops for a moment to think kindly of the people in our armed forces. Then people pop open another Budweiser and prepare to say "Oooh!" and "Ahhhh!" while more random things get shot into the sky to explode for their entertainment... and that's only if you actually go somewhere to watch the fireworks. If you stay at home it's quite the same except for that stuff about national anthems and folks in the armed services. Those are skipped in lieu of more Budwesier and blowing shit up. Also, you have to light your own shit at home.

Also...
Your friend is a psycho. Back away slowly. Anyone driven to tears by a supermarket is  :drillf: in the wrong way. Just saying...

About the only "given" that I have for Thanksgiving are the crunchy noodles that my dad's family made.  Take egg noodles, the really thin, small kind.  Melt butter in a skillet (cast iron for best effect), dump noodles from bag into skillet filled with hot melted butter.  Brown noodles.  Remove when browned onto paper towel to soak up some of the excess butter.  Sprinkle on regular noodles, dressing, whatever.  Enjoy.  I've never heard of anyone else ever doing that and my husband thought I was nuts when I first told him about it, but now he doesn't mind them at all.

This year we're having ham, I think.  It's a bit overkill to have a turkey or even a turkey breast just for 2 people.  I like turkey but I like ham more.  Especially if it's done up with brown sugar, pineapple rings and cherries.  MmMmMMmmmm.  Any other sides will be as whim takes us, although I'm in the mood for some butternut squash this year.

I get the half breast when I buy turkey and it's perfect.  It even leaves a bit for left overs a couple of times.  When I get the freebie turkey, I have to freeze most of it.  I only get the breast - no dark meat - because it's easier.  Anyway, if I want dark meat every now and then, there's always duck.  Goose is just too big.  Too much dark fatty meat for just two people. 

That's how Ingmar likes his. I like the can stuff fine too, but it doesn't have to still have the ridges and stuff for me. :P

I used to live in Taunton, MA and I used to love the look of the cranberry bogs.  I actually have no qualms with Ocean Spray either.  I always have their Cran-Cherry in my fridge.  However here in IN, I was just saying, that if you want cranberries... it's pretty much Ocean Spray or nothing at all. 

You thaw the turkey by floating it overnight in the sink (start as early in the evening as you can and flip it over before you go to bed).  You take everything out of the inside of the turkey and remove the plastic from around it.  You stick the turkey inside an oven roasting bag (just a high-temp plastic bag, can buy them in just about any supermarket), and stick that in a roasting pan (you can buy disposable ones made from aluminum, main thing is for it to be big).  You stick that in the oven on the lowest rack (pull the second one if you have two), set the oven to 350-375, and the timer to anywhere between 3 and 5 hours.  Come back when the timer goes off, if you're not ready to serve the bird lower the temperature to 200 degrees.

Now, if you want to do a traditional stuffing, or if you have a religious problem with plastic bags it can get a lot harder, and of course this doesn't factor for any other dishes you might want.  But even a bachelor with no cooking experience can make the turkey itself.

--Dave

If it's just you and a girl, you're going to have a LOT of left over turkey if you buy one that's as big as what Dave is used to.  It sounds like he does a big family dinner.  In any case, if I really wanted to do holidays and make a big turkey, I'm lucky enough to live in an area where you can get fresh killed turkeys.  You can even pick them out, if you like.  I can't do that because I tend to think my food is too cute before it's dead and we'd end up having Boca Burgers for dinner.   I'm not crazy about buying meat that's already been frozen, though.  I don't even know why.

Of course being in Italy you might be able to actually get goose there. Depends on whether she's really bothered by a non-traditional bird (sounds like she's a little unhappy at things not being exactly like they are at home) but you get a smaller, more manageable bird that will be moist and will also produce a load of fat for roasting side dishes or storing for cooking other things. I know (now) Americans can't get hold of goose but I will continue my evangelism of goose instead of turkey damnit!

Goose is great, and not untraditional. The 'white' meat is moist and tasty, and I freeze most of the dark meat bits and feed it to the cats slowly. They REALLY love greasy goose dark meat.

Goose is a traditional bird for Christmas in lots of places, but where is it traditional for Thanksgiving?

She insists that it needs lots of friends to work. And to consume all the food she's going to cook. So it's gonna be huge apparently. Some of the invited Italian friends raised the "what's Thanksgiving about, by the way?" question. I replied we are thanking Whitney for all that food she is going to cook.

EDIT: removed comment about removed moronic post.

EDIT: Stop shitting up the thread.

Cranberry sauce shaped like a can is awesome. All of you haters just need to go be snooty somewhere else.

Also, I am working on Thanksgiving day, so I don't have to worry about other people's cooking (or my own).

But before dinner is when we start drinking!

I am thankful that unlike last year, I am not on a diet during Thanksgiving.

This chick sounds demanding. She better be hot enough to put up with all that noise.

You know when you meet your positive nemesis? That hotness you've been looking for ages but kept escaping you, almost there... but never really it? Well, I found it. She's that hot to me.

Italians think that of every woman. You lot can't be trusted.

I'm Italian but I'm trying to quit. Looking to get Canadian/Finnish citizenship as soon as possible. That makes me legit with my claim.

Why would you ruin sweet potatoes with marshmallows? Ecch. I prepare mine like regular mashed potatoes, but add maple sugar. But we also have sweet potatoes more than one day a year (like at least once a week), so this time of year is great - price drops ftw.
What? Meat, tomatoes, onion/pepper/garlic, cumin. You vary beyond that, but you throw those together and you have chili :)

On turkey: I just broached the subject of getting a new (read: decent) stoven to my fiancee, who kinda balked at the price, but you gotta soften her into things...my current stoven sucks, who makes a stove with three small (electric) burners? The oven temps are all over the place, I can cobble together supper but cooking a real meal is out of the question. So I couched it in terms of not being able to host thanksgiving until I get one. Thanksgiving: the holiday where people who otherwise never cook suddenly believe they are chefs and people who cook daily have to pretend it's great...so a brined turkey cooked properly eludes us for a few more years. My step-mother finally gave up this year, they're going to a restaurant, which I have to endure for the first time ever (not counting working at a restaurant on turkey day), so I can spend the day with them.

Both girls agree: in the average Italian supermarket, everything is "different" in a frustrating fashion. Meat especially.

Chili just needs almost any meat. If it's tough, chop it smaller and cook it longer. Too fatty? Trim it and do extra draining. It doesn't even need to be beef-like, I've made chili with everything from squirrel to freezer-burned venison to emu successfully.

And a good stove I think is the most important kitchen item, I switched to a gas/electric with 4 burners of varying btus about 18 months ago with 0 regrets. The 4 burner version of THIS (http://products.geappliances.com/ApplProducts/Dispatcher?REQUEST=SpecPage&Sku=P2B912DEMBB) The 19k powerburner and little 4.5k simmer burner are great, and the oven hits temp in like 8 minutes and stays there. Glorious compared to my previous all little burners and gag oven temp. I think I paid about $750, but it was well worth it.

Ground beef is ground beef. These girls seem to be suffering either from xenophobia or a complete lack of imagination or both.

Ground beef is the least of chili meats. I've used pretty much every kind of meat (except squirrel). Back in the band days, I made an excellent mystery chili that used stuff I got on the cheap from the butcher, beef heart was actually a great ingredient.

On stovens: I was really hoping to avoid something electronic, as I dislike control panels, because they tend to be expensive repairs and real flaky, given my recent foray into washing machines (I bought a mid-level model with all mechanical controls). I'm 99% sure there's a gas line in the wall behind the current electric stoven, so I want to move back to a gas stoven.

And I totally jinxed myself by talking about the stoven, because right after my fiancee left and I went to pull the laundry out of the dryer, the dryer was spitting out an error code that probably means the control panel is shot.  :oh_i_see: Now I've got two loads of wet laundry and probably another year before I can afford a dryer, meaning another year added to the wait time for a new stoven. Blah. Given that I'm looking for something like rattran posted, I probably won't have a new stoven for about five years :(

I couldn't find anything really nice without a control panel for the oven. It was hard enough finding a gas/electric that didn't have a 5th 'griddle' burner taking up useful space all down the middle of the stove. My second choice was a really nice Bosch with a small simmer burner in the middle of the other 4, but it was $250 more.

Yeah, take two Unitedstatesian girls who are usually very good at cooking, look at their inability to cook satisfying American food in Rome! That has to be xenophobia or complete lack of imagination!

Cooking a proper traditional dish is not so much about imagination, is about having the proper stuff. They both managed to cook DELICIOUS meals for me, thanks to their imagination. It just wasn't what they originally had in mind cause it couldn't be done properly, not without visiting a very expensive "import" grocery store which I don't even know around here. Honestly I don't know what was missing for chili, I guess it was the chili pepper itself, powder or whatever, since we certainly have onions and garlic (although they have been deemed "different" too. The onions especially).

I, for one, couldn't cook a satisfying Italian pasta of any kind in the States, in Finland or in Romania and while I might concede on MY lack of imagination, I know for certain that I am not xenophobic. Actually I've been accused often of being the opposite, a true xenophiliac.

All this said, where's Voodoolily? We are talking about food here!

She's busy spawning.

I can beat that.  The inlaws put lemon juice in them, as well as top with marshmallows.  I could probably deal with the mallows but lemon juice is badong.

We never did the lemon juice, but sweet potatoes with marshmallows was absolutely one of the common holiday side dishes.

I don't use "chili powder" in my chili. You can use a hot paprika or any other dried chili kind of thing. The rest is just dried garlic, cumin, etc. But I'll give that one a pass, as most people don't delve far enough to learn that kind of stuff. Buy me a couple tickets to Rome and I'll make you some chili out of your local markets :) I'm also fairly good at substitution, out of necessity (I spent many years being abjectly poor). Also, if you couldn't find a decent import pasta, why didn't you just whip up a batch? S'easy.

Lemon juice...why? A sweet and sour thing? Also, they're not yams. Small, unrelated peeve.

Ancho chili ground is what I prefer for chili. "Powder" is usually that plus cumin, coriander, paprika, maybe some other things. Harder to control for taste, usually lower quality and older.

I actually like sweet potatoes best as part of a mixed roast of cubed winter root vegetables (parsnip, yams, turnips primarily). But they're really versatile, lots of good things you can do with them. Marshmellow topping is not one of those good things.

I've made a relish I really like with chopped good fresh cranberries, a bit of fresh squeezed orange juice and orange zest, some sugar, nutmeg, a few other little things. Otherwise I don't want anything "cranberry" within a thousand miles of my turkey day.

I'm sure you could do so in some places and not in others. The US varies rather greatly in the availability of 'unusual' ingredients. You can get just about anything you want here in the Bay Area I imagine (assuming its legal), but in Nebraska not so much.

Pasta Barilla is easily found in the States and it's very good. Problem is, you need much more to do a real Amatriciana, a Carbonara or even the simplest Gricia.

Look, in 2010 I won't claim you can't find anything you want in any of the world major cities. Just saying that when you approach the average supermarket of a different country, your cooking enthusiasm is probably going to be curbed unless you are in for experimentation. Lucky me, they were so we are all happy! The tears part was an exaggeration, she was just very very sorry since she promised chili for superbowl and she couldn't do it with stuff available in the closeby, large and absolutely most common and chain supermarket-grocery. I am sure the ingredients were there. She just picked them up, kept looking at them, sighed a few times and then she said she couldn't do it with all the stuff being so different or missing.

Caught last year's Iron Chef Thanksgiving Throwdown over the weekend. Bobby Flay made a cranberry sauce with jalepenos in it that had me drooling. Thinking about giving it a try, but can't seem to track down a recipe. I can probably fake it though.

Ok, ok, sorry that I was rude about the two girls. There's only one solution, however; you have to bring them both to F13 and have them defend their cooking honor in person.

What do you mean "bring them to F13"?  Have them bathed and brought to Schild in Texas?

It begins.

That would certainly give him something to give thanks for.

I'm sure you could probably do this with two hobos down the street from where he lives, and it would be cheaper!   :awesome_for_real:

This is an AB recipe that I just made.  I doubled the sugar and maple syrup since it sounded a bit too tart for my family. 
It is excellent.

Tart Cranberry Dipping Sauce

Ingredients
•   1 pound frozen cranberries
•   2 cups orange juice
•   3 cups ginger ale
•   2 tablespoons maple syrup
•   2 tablespoons light brown sugar
•   1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
•   1 orange, zested
Directions
Combine all ingredients in a non-reactive saucepan (stainless steel), and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer, stirring occasionally,
for 30 to 45 minutes or until liquid is reduced by half.  Carefully puree with stick blender or blender until smooth. Check for seasoning
and serve in small ramekins.

Wow, the more I read about how the Native Americans helped the Pilgrims it is amazing to see how much of an asshats we were to them later.  Deer and waterfowl (so probably duck & goose) are mentioned in a written letter home.  Turkey might have been on it, but it was mentioned more of wild game birds so it could be any number of them, but there wasn't potato, cranberries, pie's, or popcorn.

I'm working again, so we are doing the work place carry-in, not sure what to make, but I'm thinking some dip and bread will be nice (beer bread is awesome with some homemade onion dip).

My family is split with my Dad being European, and my Mom being American. My sister and I were born in Europe, but we all moved back to the States when we were young and starting doing things with the American half of the family. So our Thanksgiving has turned into a weird mutant beast, you might be able to find something similar and ease some of the weirdness. Your girlfriend might enjoy the twist.

We add various combinations of the food we ate before we moved into the normal mix of turkey and mashed potatos:
crepes
filet/primerib/roasts of some kind. Once we made Lobster Thermidor for shits and giggles
duck or goose
spaetzle (a german egg noodle)
paté
sausages various kinds
Charcuterie like prosciutto and salamis
tons and tons of wine

More like 8 hobos.

I'll be in San Antonio for Thanksgiving and I have no clue what's going on in here.

Demetra is on a posting streak!  :thumbs_up:

Thanks, dipping my toes in the cranberry sauce so to speak.

I posted it because while I like home made cranberry sauce, I am the only one at our table who does.  The roomie
will only eat that awful canned stuff and then only on turkey sandwiches with cream cheese.

I discovered cranberry recipes thanks to my fiancee, she and her mother both love them. I've used it as an accent in a few things, but I'll have to work in that dip at some point. I did make a great stuffing a few years ago that features cranberries.

That is a great way to eat the real stuff too! Cream cheese is magical stuff.

Turkey, 18 lbs, check.
Potatoes, check.
Cranberry sauce, check.
Empty stomach, check.

I'll keep you posted.

Yesterday I made two pumpkin pies, and a lemon pie just for the hell of it since I still had just enough shortening to make another pie crust.  I used a lemon meringue recipe but I'll be subbing whipped cream for meringue.  This morning I made my squash casserole, this time with muenster instead of cheddar, and just before we go over I will whip the cream for the lemon pie.

I enjoy the cooking, and as an added bonus I won't have to eat the typical ass-deserts like sweet-potatoes-with-orange-juice and coconut-cake.  Well, unless everyone else eats my food.

Everything's ready short of final assemblies and baking such.

Today's menu:

Barley w/leeks, wild mushrooms and chive butter
Corn bread stuffing (sausage/tomato/corn/scallions soaked in a bit of butter and dark beer)
Fennel puree
Carrot/cabbage salad w/lime and jalapeno dressing
Mashed potatoes
Gravy made w/giblet broth
Turkey

Banana pudding
Pumpkin pie

You are a gentleman among scholars. Screw meringue!

Headed out the door momentarily for the ~2 hour drive to my brother's house in Everson (almost Canada). Of all days, my stomach is not feeling quite up to snuff this morning....arrgh. Took an antacid- hope that takes care of it. If I can't enjoy the feast I shall be very put out.


Happy Thanksgiving, kids.

we just finnished shucking some oysters.  damn fine start.

Happy turkey day everyone. I'm thankful I don't live in San Antonio. This place sucks. Riverwalk is for touristy douchebags.

I am thankful that I am having a semi-comeuppance after my bitching about Ingmar's family eating so late, because I am sick and don't want to move yet and I don't have to because dinner isn't for another five hours.

I took a 3 hour bath, and now am eating ham, penne pasta in a light tomato and cream sauce, and fresh bread. Surrounded by cats. It's a good thanksgiving.

Did they make any hostage demands? Should we call the police for you?

I had a Thanksgiving Popeye's chicken and have been working on my RenFest outfit for tomorrow.  It's been a pretty good day. :-)

I haven't had anything to eat today yet.

Are ethnic food delivery places open on Thanksgiving?  :awesome_for_real:

It was the high point of my Basic Training experience (at Lackland you get a day pass to downtown towards the end).  But by then, my standards of "fun" were pretty low, and The Alamo was closed.

--Dave

The only demand was for ham, which when satisfied left he cats sleeping in little lumps around the room. Well, except Random who seemed more interested in the rosemary and olive oil bread than the ham. But's he's somewhat weird.

Since we got a freebie turkey (I was even able to get just the boobies!), I made the effort.  Threw some cranberries, oranges, and apples in the crock pot this morning for sauce - it came out too tart but the house smells lovely, stuffed the turkey with lemons, oranges and thyme, smushed some potatoes with sour cream, butter, and a bit of nutmeg, made apple, onion and walnut stuffing, steamed sprouts, gravy from drippings which was nice and light due to the citrus.  All very traditional food.  Even have apple pie, although I didn't make it myself.  I just couldn't manage anything else today.  We didn't pray or make speeches about being thankful for anything.  I haven't watched any parades or football.  We'll have leftovers forever.    :ye_gods:  I'm tired.  This is why I don't do holidays!  Beans on toast next year.

Strangely, I just put some rosemary and olive oil bread in the freezer!  We don't use up bread fast enough not to.  Magenta ate some turkey but Lister wanted salmon.  Cats.

We followed Alton Brown's methodology for a brined and roasted turkey and it turned out spectacular. I am both stuffed and drunk right now.

Thanksgiving with good friends is the way to go.  Had my fill of turkey and the trimmings and catching up with some folks I haven't seen in quite a while. 

I am finding a small but resilient anti-meringue underground. :awesome_for_real:

The lemon pie, I have to say, was awesome.  I don't mean to be immodest, but it was the best lemon pie I have ever had.  A true sour lemon pie that made my mouth draw up like in the cartoons when Jerry put alum in Tom's mouth.  I almost could not eat the whole slice!  It was awesome.  Easy, too.  Maybe too much zest, but I did end up using the dried sort.

The wife requested a lemon cream pie for next time... should be easy, just use some cream in place of water, I guess.  Then the women started up a bunch of bullshit about mixing Crystal Lite in Cool-Whip, and using Splenda, and the wonders of sugar-free Jello pudding.  Stupid women, taking all the goodness out of life.  It's like they didn't just eat some heavy cream whipped with confectioner's sugar.

I had Thanksgiving in West Hollyweird with a bunch of middle aged gay men and women.  It was a good time, they sure can cook!

Pixplz  :hello_kitty_2:

Mission accomplished!

Turkey was absolutely awesome, and now there's a bunch of Italians asking for thanksgiving dinner every week!
Mashed potatoes impressed everyone, as being "different" from ours and more satisfying for some unknown reason (probably just pepper, heh).
Lots of lovely gravy, then green bean casserole and butternut squash with honey and curry.
There was some broccoli thing too, but let's face it: everyone hates broccoli.
Wine. Heh.

neg

Broccoli is awesome.

Well I'm partaking of the traditional Friday after-thanksgiving activities: massive hangover and sandwiches.

Just to feel like I participated, I made my favorite Yam recipe yesterday.

Tonight is the even-better-than-our-awesome-turkey-day-after-Thanksgiving-dinner:

(http://z.hubpages.com/u/85997_f520.jpg)

^This a thousand times. I don't think I've moved this slow in a long ass time.

For real, I love broccoli.  Cauliflower on the other hand, I wouldn't even feed to my dogs.

A crab orgy?

Yep! It is dungeness crab season, which is pretty much the best time of year. So good.

Preach it!

Yesterday I ended up eating two microwave burritos and a slice of store-bought pumpkin pie.

Best thanksgiving ever!

Anyone who can actually smell the noxious taint that broccoli gives off hates it. Everyone else thinks they like it.

Neg. Steamed with sage and possibly rosemary in the steaming water works wonders. Granted, I have one of those steaming basket things...

Pre-dinner snacks at the thanksgiving dinner I went to included crab cakes.  They were quite tasty.

Broccoli is one of the few veggies I regularly buy. Steamed lightly with a bit of butter works fine. I also add it to things, especially curry ramen.

Mind you, I love all the "icky" veggies: artichokes, aspargus, cauliflower, turnips, beets, etc

Could do without parsnips and eggplant, mind you.

Had a pot luck Thanksgiving with about 30 of my classmates/colleagues/FSO family/wtfever. Not only do I have more in common with these people than most of my own family (makes things more fun), but you also get some very unusual dishes (or preparations of "normal" dishes) that I wouldn't normally see at the usual family function. Like yams with onions and goat cheese - sounds weird as hell, but was actually quite delicious. Also, homemade cranberry sauce. I normally hate the stuff, but however they made it was great (sort of like Lingonberry stuff you'd see at Ikea).

It going to be interesting trying to get some of the US Thanksgiving staples overseas, especially in Africa, Asia, or the Near/Middle East. ESPECIALLY if we don't have access to a US military base.

Ever since sophomore year of college, thanksgiving has been a "friends" holiday instead of a "family" holiday for me, and it works really well that way.  It's definitely fun to get enough folks together that you end up with 2-3 different "family recipes" of stuffing, potatoes, etc, possibly multiple turkeys prepared different ways.

I did that last year, came out excellent.

This year we went to Chicago and ate with my GF's family.  I'm not sure how they manage to keep that city so clean looking.

I moved to Chicago (well, the northern burbs anyway) about three years ago, and it really is a remarkably clean and attractive city.  I think it surprises a lot of people.

Doesn't the wind just blow everything out of town?

By imitating Toronto, I imagine, now that place is *really* creepy clean.

We do my partner's extended family every other year. It's six hours of my life I won't get back.

We sweep early and often.

I'm guessing you didn't visit the south side.  I used to go there often to visit a girlfriend's relatives and it seemed that they had a huge broom shortage that got worse as you got closer to Gary, IN. 

Haha, goodness no!  South side may as well be on another planet.

I understand that's the baddest part of town.

I never realized how clean Chicago was until the first time I visited Las Vegas and walked down the street to another Casino.  Talk about filthy, and it wasn't just the thousands of call girl handbills flying around either.

We should have a Chicago meet-up some time.  There's at least 3 of us in the greater metro area and I've at least met Slack before (shared a hotel room with him even!).

Have any of you eaten a Turducken? It sounds rather insane, but I'm considering it as a Christmas Lunch-dinner (and probably both for boxing day as well). I know it gets some play in Thanksgivings.

Also any particularly good recipies for same.

I've only had Turducken once, but it was pretty damn  :awesome_for_real:.

Everytime someone mentions turduken I think of the Red vs Blue 2004 thanksgiving thing. (too lazy to look it up to link it).