This from today's Huffpost:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/zagat/...itle=Fruitcake
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This from today's Huffpost:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/zagat/...itle=Fruitcake
1) A fresh homemade fruit cake can be a nice treat but the store bought ones and the ones sent through the mail are not worth a bite.
2) I can pass on the ham, I would rather Turkey, Chicken or Roast Beast or an actual pork loin, mmmm, pork.
3) Sweet Potato Marshmallow Casserole: Yuck! Disgusting as all hell.
4) Thanksgiving Turkey: Love it, in fact we will be serving a Turkey and a smoked turkey.
5) Cranberry Sauce: From the can is just wrong, home made from cranberries is a treat and the prefect dressing for a turkey sandwich.
6) Eggnog: I love it and the ice cream version of it. I love it with and without rum.
7) Green Bean Casserole: Is OK fresh, but throw it out when done, it does not reheat at all. I would rather just have sauteed green beans though.
8) Turducken: Not a fan, expensive and stupid to me. It should be a joke, not real.
I don't like candied fruit, so it follows that I don't like a cake made out of the stuff.
We never had ham for holiday meals so I just don't think of it as a festive food. Turkey for Thanksgiving, prime rib for X-mas.
There is no form of sweet potato that I do not love. I love the cassrole with marshmallows or with streusel topping. Sweet potatoes are super delicious all the time.
Turkey is OK, but for me Thanksgiving dinner is about the fixings: gravy, potatoes, stuffing, veggies, gravy, rolls, gravy ...
Cranberry sauce in can-shape has the fond childhood nostalgia factor, but to eat I prefer the homemade version, especially the ones with a bit of citrus and spice.
Eggnog is good, but it's so rich and sweet that I can only drink a little bit (I can stand a bit more if it's thinned out with whiskey or rum).
I <3 green bean casserole, even though hardly anyone else I know shares my affection. Jim is right, though. It doesn't stand up to re-heating at all.
Turducken should only exist for football broadcasts or huge banquets.
I pretty much agree with Orual, except that well-made turkey is pretty good, especially when you consider that it is such a healthy choice. For lunch today I will probably eat turkey and string beans (not the casserole, alas - fresh long beans steamed with a bit of olive oil, then tossed with a little sea salt and huge amounts of Penzey's dill weed, which is also quite good and much healthery).
We had our Thanksgiving dinner early, so I'm already chowing down on the leftovers.
Oops - and I LIKE the nasty canned cranberry sauce as much as I like good homemade relish. They are two different foods.
1) I like fruit cake. Obviously, sugary stale manufactured ones are not ideal.
2) Ham = my least favorite popular cut of animal protein. I'll eat it, but would rather have almost anything else, including tripe and hoof.
3) I hate Thanksgiving marshmallow sweet potato stuff. I love sweet potatoes. Therefore, I make sweet potato casserole with a topping of pecans fried in butter and brown sugar. It is good, y'all.
4) I LOVE TURKEY. I love it deep-fried (thank you, South), smoked, and since discovering brining, even roasted.
5) I can take or leave cranberries.
6) I love egg nog! From the carton or homemade, Rated G or Rated R, it's all good.
7) Since I like green beans, greatly preferring fresh to canned, and dislike canned soup, I will pass on the casserole and just have the beans.
8) Turducken is laughably excessive and har-har American, but more importantly, is impossible to prepare so that everything is fully cooked and still juicy.
I really don't understand canned cranberry gel stuff. (My mother serves it by squorking it out of the can and slicing it; there's no pretense as to its origins.) Making a cranberry sauce from actual cranberries is ridiculously easy and much tastier.
I don't like sweet potatoes, but I will eat all the topping off OCS's version, because pralines!
Turducken: Do people actually eat this? I think of it as a culinary gag, a prank that no one actually engages in with any seriousness. Apparently I am wrong.
I am already looking forward to a Thanksgiving sandwich.
Squork! Squork! Sorry, it's such a great word I have to repeat it. And that is the sound the gel makes as it releases from the can. I serve it the same way your mom does.Quote:
Originally posted by artifex
I think (though I'd love it if you prove me wrong) that it is incorrect to say that "making a cranberry sauce from actual cranberries is ridiculously easy." Don't you mean that making a cranberry relish is easy? Tossing some cranberries, apples, orange zest and sugar into the food processor is easy and produces delicious results, but it's not sauce.
If you have a sauce recipe, send it my way! I am properly ashamed of serving the canned stuff, but ... I can't do Thanksgiving without cranberry sauce.
I'll ask my wife for it if I remember. It is easy as my daughter has done most of the work the last two years.
I make cranberry sauce by throwing cranberries, juice and zest from an orange, water, and sugar into a pot and simmering it. (No real recipe...eyeball amounts and adjust to taste.) After a while the cranberries break down some and release pectin but it's still a sauce, not a jelly. This year I'm going to add a little bourbon for flavor, we'll see how it goes.
I have had cranberry relish (cranberries, oranges, etc. thrown into a food grinder) but I don't like it. The flavors are a little sharp and astringent for me.
^^^ The sauce is lovely. Cranberries have so much pectin that the sauce is as thick and velvety as if you'd added corn starch, and the citrus and sugar cut the bitterness to the point you can taste other notes from the cranberries than just the initial assault.
Oh man, done right, a good sweet-potato casserole is fabulous. Love the pecans. Toasty...ooh.Quote:
Originally posted by OneCentStamp
I do love a good green-bean casserole. Even love the crummy soup-from-a-can variety, as long as there's enough Durkee Onions on top.
Well sure. When making the traditional green bean casserole, one must always purchase exactly twice as many Durkee Onions as the recipe calls for, to allow for snacking while making it. :)Quote:
Originally posted by Oliveloaf
When I say I love green bean casserole, I mostly mean I love an excuse to buy those little cans of french-fried onion bits. They are tasty and gross, but mostly tasty.
Exactly.Quote:
Originally posted by Orual
1) I make my fruitcake from scratch and adore it. I'd never give it as a gift or try to push it on someone, as I know it's not a terribly popular item. My recipe involves coffee and soaking my fruit in red wine overnight, and then bourbon. Lots and lots of bourbon.
2) Eh. I lack a strong opinion on ham either way.
3) I love sweet potatoes, but hate them all mushed up with the marshmallows. My sister does something similar to what OneCentStamp mentions and I love them.
4) Turkey. <3
5) I make a cranberry relish, which I vastly prefer over the canned sauce. It's ground cranberries with some fresh ginger, jalapeno, lemon zest, and a wee bit of sugar.
6) Love. Egg. Nog. I just recently started making it on my own from scratch, which is now how I prefer it.
7) I've done a lot of variations on green bean casserole over the years and I always enjoy it. I love green beans, though. My favorite way to eat them is with roasted garlic and sauteed mushrooms.
8) No. No. And fuck no.
Of the first 50 photos I saw of you, approximately 48 of them were of you carving up turkey, mostly just shots of your hands. :)Quote:
Originally posted by Zuul
It's like this, but turkey.
http://www.rachelleb.com/images/2010...ve-cocaine.jpg
I have no idea why my brother chose to tag every last picture of my hands as they carved the turkey, though.
Elton Brown spruces up green-bean casserole
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/1...n_1100429.html
The one we use.
Whole Berry Cranberry Sauce: (Ocean Spray's recipe)
1 cup Water
1 cup sugar
12-ounces of Cranberry
Bring water & sugar to a boil in medium saucepan
Add cranberries & return to boil
Reduce heat & boil gently for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Pour sauce into a bowl, cover and cool completely at room temp.
Refrig until serving time. Makes 2.25 cups.
It is really tasty and as you see, easy. My daughter is part way through a double recipe as I type this.