So, what makes your Thanksgiving traditions different from everyone else’s? Do you have a special appetizer, or side dish, or dessert? Do you have some strange ritual (airing of grievances?) that your family reenacts each year? My family has a few idiosyncratic traditions, including singing grace in the round and serving a special clams appetizer.
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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We’ve always run Thanksgiving as a quasi-potluck.
Everyone has their signature dish that they’ve always made. When folks pass on, we keep them alive by continuing to serve their dish, their way.
We’ve got Great-Great Grandmother’s ‘greek salad’, Great Grandma’s chopped chicken liver, Aunt Janet’s Kissatort, etc. It really makes the meal a ceremony in of itself, each of us reminded of loved ones by the forkful.
Definitely my favorite holiday..
and your family has a lot of great cooks.
Flattery will get you leftovers…
Where? It isn’t usually a telecommute job (<g> thinking of how that might work), and someone I could recommend to you in Harrisburg is apt to charge a fortune to fix plumbing in Santa Fe or Portland.
That is a really wonderful tradition.
Wew have the traditional harrowing drive down to Long Island. Not all traditions are good ones.
Should be We. See, I’m already distressed.
I thought you meant “Whew!”
That too! 😉
Our special appetizer is strained civility, followed by a side dish of bitter nostalgia, then sweet parting for dessert.
OK, I greatly exaggerate. Happy Thanksgiving.
holiday meals involve the “airing of grievances”?
followed by the traditional “Assignment of Blame”
fresh salsa. other than that, pretty traditional. turkey tacos are almost always on the menu for the day after.
I love Thanksgiving. It’s my favorite holiday.
We don’t watch football. We have no alcohol. We play games.
We never air grievances – we never have grievances. Seriously. Everyone likes each other and is happy to get together. And sad when the day is over.
Sounds fun. What games do you play?
Things that are good for a large group ranging in age from 2 to 80. The 2 year old “helps”. Charades, word games. Sometimes we play pin the wattle on the Turkey. 🙂
Well, at my In-Laws, no one is allowed to bring anything or help in any way, but we must all listen to MIL complain about how stressful it all is (this starts weeks before, mind you). And OMG, don’t even think of asking where the appetizers and snacks are – because there aren’t any and why do you need to eat before dinner anyway I made all this food and you better be hungry when I serve it at 6 p.m. about 5 hours after you’ve arrived.
Yeah, that works great when there are kids under 10 involved. We are taking our lives into our own hands this year and bringing two small appetizers…unannounced.
If you don’t see any posts from me after tomorrow, you’ll know what happened…
Watching the cousins play is pretty darn fun, though – four boys under the age of 10 who love being together and play really well together 🙂
Better not take your knitting…the hunger might drive you to do something you’ll regret! 🙂
That’s nice that all the boys get along so well together.
Well, now, MIL is a HUGE knitter. She’s the one who taught me to knit, so bringing my knitting would actually be acceptable 🙂
Oops – the cat stepped on the track pad and posted for me before I was finished! I was going to say that yes, you are right about the danger of the needles at certain family events…you just never know!
A must see any Thanksgiving.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8GSKBc9UFY
I’m letting my sister come this year. that’s not to say she’s welcome, but I’m letting her in the house.
‘Nuff said.
Here in Baltimore it is expected and required that Thanksgiving turkey come with a side of sauerkraut cooked long hours with polish sausage and caraway seeds.
I joined after months of lurking just to tell you that. Great site.
Yum….very unusual for Thanksgiving, no?
Our tradition is to make spinach dip served in a hollowed-out round loaf of pumpernickel for my niece to take home with her. (She may be sick of it after 10 years, but she’s gracious; after all, it is a tradition.)
This year my husband’s making a shrimp-rice-beans concoction to go with the proper turkey, etc. I told him it’s sacrilegious, but my mother encouraged him.
And yes, we have one relative we grudgingly allow to enter.
Hi talkwriter! We have no particular food serving traditions here, just wanted to say welcome to BooTrib.
my family is in so many different places this year and has been for years that my tradition has become going to the nursing home to flirt with the old guys and have dinner out somewhere.
this year we are going to the moshulu
Yeah, us too with the nursing home, only this morning it was the endoscopy dept. at the hospital. My mom apparently has a pretty good sized ulcer and is having difficulty swallowing. Looks like the restaurant for us too. Happy Thanksgiving anyway!
A few years ago my daughter asked me to prepare a traditional Iraqi meal for Thanksgiving dinner for her and her friends. Iraqi dishes can be terribly labour intensive, so I brought the ingredients, and lined everyone up the kitchen, assigned them tasks, gave them instructions and supervision, and we all prepared the food together. It was really fun, and the guests enjoyed preparing and then eating the meal.
Sounds great! Want to repeat that at our house next year?
From my first set of in-laws, I learned that Polish cooking is also immensely labor-intensive: all sorts of making dough and rolling it out and stuffing things. Then (unfortunately after my first MIL died) my FIL discovered that pierogi and stuffed cabbage and the like were available in the frozen-food section of supermarkets and almost just as good as the homemade. May you find your favorite in the same place soon.
Alas, nothing like that is available here, but in `Amman Jordan now that there is a huge Iraqi community there are all kinds of Iraqi restaurants and takeout places with every type of Iraqi dish you can imagine. The Iraqis who fled to Jordan in the first years are generally quite affluent, or at least middle class, and can afford to eat out or get take-out often.
Some Iraqi dishes, like the various types of kubba (kibbi in Lebanese) should actually freeze very well. In Iraq some types of kubba are served with very particular sauces, some of which should do very well frozen, but I don’t know how the yoghurt-based sauces would do. Other things might not fare as well. I have made huge pots of Iraqi dolma (NOT the cold, meatless stuffed grape leaves, but onion layers, small eggplants, zucchini-type squash, small tomatoes, green peppers – I don’t like those and they affect the flavour of the whole pot so I don’t do them – and grape leaves or swiss chard stuffed with rice, ground lamb, pine nuts, raisins, spices, etc. and served hot), and then frozen serving-size portions. That works out well. And the various stews popular in Iraq should do OK – my favourite is bamia – okra stew, and mine never comes out slimey. There are some rice dishes though that need a crispy crust, and that probably would not work so well.
Can you point me to some recipes? I’m semiretired from cooking, but my husband loves to create a huge mess in the kitchen now and then, especially if it has rice in it. He’s a big fan of okra and insists it isn’t slimy; I can see him making bamia.
The onion-eggplant-squash-tomatoes-peppers combination reminds me of ratatouille, which was my favorite meal until I lost my recipe.
Well, dolma is really nothing like ratatouille. If you have ever had Lebanese or Palestinian stuffed grape leaves, just think of that only stuffed with meat and raisins and pine nuts or almonds and herbs and spices as well as rice, and served hot.
Bamia is not all that much work to make, really, and is quite a common daily dish all over the Arab world with all kinds of local styles, but the basic ingredients are the same everywhere. You serve it over rice. There is a pretty good-looking recipe here. For meat you can use chicken parts – legs are good – or lamb or even beef. I sometimes use lamb shanks, or cubed lamb. I also like to add some lemon juice. And it should not need two hours to cook, really. You can play around with the recipe as much as you like. Sometimes you can find very small “baby” okra frozen in Middle East markets. If you use frozen okra do not add it until the last 30 minutes or so.
There used to be quite a good set of recipes online that belonged to the late sister of someone I know, but I can’t seem to find it now, and I don’t seem to have a link on this computer.
We love kibbeh nayye – the owner of the Halal butcher shop where we buy a lot of our meat gave me his recipe. It’s the only place where I’ll buy ground meat as they do their own butchering and no worries about machines that strip the last bit of flesh from the spine. Now I need to learn how to make baba ghanoush.
It’s really a good idea to buy halal meat if you can if only for health reasons. By Islamic law “downer” animals are not halal because the animals must be healthy by outward appearance, so they must be able to walk. Surprisingly halal meat is often less expensive than the factory-produced meat you get at the supermarket. At least that is true in my area.
I am terrible at making kubba. What I make tastes OK, but I just never mastered how to make it look nice. Now I regret my lack of interest in it during my earlier years. There is something called kubbat Halab, Aleppo kubba. It is made with a rice dough instead of burghal dough. It is very popular in Iraq. There was always someone who was very good at making it, so I never bothered to learn, and now they are gone so I can never learn from them.
Our dinner is pretty standard, but we have a post-dinner activity: bowling.
And this year, if anyone’s up to it after bowling, a rousing game of Phase 10. It has become the favorite family game, beating Scrabble, Uno and Spades/Bid Whist.
OK, so somebody always sneaks Spades or Bid Whist in, too, but they’re not the primary game(s) anymore. It’s too many of us now!
Statue of Salah Ad Din (aka Saladin) liberating Jerusalem from the Crusaders in the year 1184
This statue is outside the Old City of Damascus very near the Umayid Mosque. You can see the wall of the Old City in the background of some of the photos.
Thanks again, hurria! Please keep the photos coming when you can.
Second Thanksgiving without Mom & sixth without Dad. Girls are in PA & CA, so it’s just DH, me, 3 cats & a 19#+ turkey.. Will fix the traditional turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes (packaged – I’m getting lazy), gravy & a couple veggies. Lots of leftovers so I won’t have to cook for a couple days!
I’m up early to get ready to attend the Detroit Thanksgiving Day Parade. My parents never took me and my brother, they aren’t big cold weather fans. I determined that I would take Andrew every year. Living in Canada, he actually has school, so he’ll be absent.
It’s a German-Yugoslavian dessert involving phyllo, apples, raisins, sugar, butter, and I add cranberries.
Mmmmmmmm, sounds delicious! German food is my very favorite ever since I experienced the real thing here back in the 80’s. It was a lovely and interesting city to visit.
Here is the procedure:
Preheat oven to 325 F.
Thank you, now I’m drooling!
Wann ich wahr 5-10, meine Familie wohnt im Frankfurt am Maine. Das wahr 1957-1962. Am diesen Zeit, die Mark wahr 4 fur eine Dollar, so es war gut fur alle Amerikanische.
Sadly, I was not able to stay long enough to really pick up much of the language, except to get around and eat. I was privileged to have German hosts (feuerwehrmänner) who made everything very easy for me. IIRC, the exchange rate at that time was about 1.75 Mark to $1.00. I will never forget the excellent public transportation available both there and in Spain.
We have Turkey Dinner, then we always go see a movie. Tonight we’re seeing Bolt.
High School football in the morning. My kid’s school have played a rival school for 61 years on Thanksgiving. Not quite the 102 year rivalry of Phillipsburg, NJ/Easton, PA but cool.
Alice’s Restaurant. Always.
This is my favorite T-day video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iafzqOCaxA4