A Feast For Five

It’s that time of year… The time of year when we plan for that most important meal of the year, Thanksgiving Dinner! Many look forward to going over to a family member’s house for Turkey Day, as the specter of staring down the time and effort of preparing such a feast is too much. It doesn’t help that there are innumerable stories, both on TV and in real life, about the disasters that await any who dare to tempt the Ghost of Thanksgiving Past and spend an entire morning in the kitchen preparing a meal that will, doubtless, make at least one family member complain about it afterwards. Who could forget poor Catherine Johnson, wife to Clark Griswold’s cousin Eddie, and her epic failure on the Christmas turkey?

Me… I like tempting that fate! I love the joy in preparing a grand feast that will feed my family not only for the Thanksgiving Holiday, but for the entire week after! There are so many recipes for Thanksgiving leftovers that your family can have a feast everyday for at least five days. Usually, though, that’s about the limit one can stand for consecutive days of turkey.

Most importantly, though, is the joy and closeness Thanksgiving brings to your own family with the extended family. More innumerable stories exist detailing the bad luck involved in traveling for the holidays. We all remember the crazy adventure of Neil Page and Dell Griffith trying to make their way from New York City to Chicago, a trip that involved planes, trains, and automobiles.

But a hearty, filling Thanksgiving meal is a great way to enhance the family atmosphere. When you’re all eating something delicious the smiles will infect everybody, the conversation will be more fun, and the whole experience will create a grand entrance to the holiday season. In that vein, I take the preparation and cooking of Thanksgiving dinner extremely seriously. I have my staple dishes, but there always has to be something different, and even the staples are can be slightly different from year to year.

So, sit right back and you’ll hear a tale, the tale of a fateful… Thanksgiving dinner.

Dessert… Yum!

Yes, it’s a little weird to start with the ending, but the climax belongs at the end of the story. These desserts are excellent, but they’re not the climax.

My wife, bless her, has suffered from ulcerative colitis for over 20 years, and add that to other medical conditions, her diet is quite restricted. Furthermore, the two of us are both in our mid-forties, so we’re also thinking about our health. As such, I have quickly and happily come to terms with the use of almond milk, oat milk, and other non-dairy substitutes. Interestingly, almonds can also be used as a replacement for other types of foods, as well. In the case of our desserts, we are going to be using almond flour. Who knew?

We have decided to think outside the traditional Thanksgiving desserts, and we will not be partaking of pumpkin pie or apple pie. Our first dessert may even seem a bit more Christmas-y.

Almond Flour Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars are a wonderfully healthy choice, and, of course, will be a real hit with the children. I mean, what child doesn’t like chocolate chip cookies? Now, before you write off this dish, let me just say that it is more traditional in its recipe than you might think. The almond flour is the only ‘healthy’ replacement, but we will also not be using milk chocolate chips.

Dark chocolate, especially as a kid, takes some time to acquire a taste for. As for me and my wife, we both love it! It doesn’t hurt that dark chocolate is high in antioxidants, is good for your HDL cholesterol, and several other benefits that you can find here.

Now, our other dessert is Chocolate Almond Cream Pie. This one I can’t wait to try! For the filling we are going all in on the healthy side. We will be using Lactaid® whipping cream, almond butter, almond cream, honey, and sunflower oil. I’m guessing that this will sit so lightly in our full bellies that it won’t even feel like we’ve had dessert! The crust, too, will include honey and almond flour.

How can anybody complain about two desserts that include chocolate? Seriously?! If this is eating healthy, then I’m a big YES!

The Side Dishes

We are having three side dishes with our meal on Thursday, and I’m looking forward to each one of them. When I was a kid, I was more finicky than a cat. And when it came to vegetables, I played a game of avoidance that second-to-none. Three decades later, and I’m still picky about the vegetables I eat, but at least it doesn’t anger my wife or set a bad precedent for my kids (one of which is very much like me in the realm of vegetables).

Our vegetable side dish this year, though, is a very simple one. Three ingredients: FRESH green beans, butter, and kosher salt. When you have fresh green beans, you have something that is so flavorful on its own that you really don’t need to dress it up in some wild seasoning combination or fancy gourmet sauce. A little butter and and some kosher salt will send those beans easily past GO, and our bellies will collect that $200.

Then we have the cranberry sauce. Unfortunately, as her limited diet does not allow it, my wife will not be able to partake of this dish because I am making homemade cranberry sauce using fresh cranberries. This particular dish is not much more complicated than the green beans, having only five ingredients. And there isn’t really a ‘healthy’ way to make it, but I think the fact that I’m using fresh cranberries says a lot, wouldn’t you agree? Plus, it doesn’t take a whole lot of time, either, with only 20 minutes of prep and stovetop work, then it’s into the refrigerator for a couple of hours.

There is also the plan to make red potato mashed potatoes. It’s your basic recipe, but I will be using the lactose-free milk, or almond milk, and a rustic seasoning mix that I probably won’t settle on until Thursday morning. The cool thing about having a solid understanding of herbs and spices is that you can choose the right flavors at almost a moment’s notice.

My staple dish for Thanksgiving dinner is Cracker Corn. It also goes by the name Scalloped Corn. It’s a fun dish, and one that I never thought I’d eat or love. Why? Because of the creamed corn that’s in it… Yes, yes, as a kid I wasn’t a fan of creamed corn, either. But let me tell you, this dish is fantastic, and my kids love it! It’s also a rather simple dish, too, being a combination of creamed corn, whole kernel sweet corn, and saltine crackers. Indeed, you get to use saltine crackers for Thanksgiving! Mixed together in a base of eggs and milk, with a crust of seasoned saltines on top, it’s a minor tour de force on the holiday menu. Now, this is a dish that I alter slightly every year. Whether it’s changing up the seasoning or making the dish more or less thick, you can alter the texture to suit the overall theme of your menu. This year, being accompanied by the side dish I will speak of next, I’m going to keep the cracker corn a little on the thinner side, more like a stew.

Finally, we have the side dish that I’m most excited about… Crockpot Sausage Stuffing! You know, there’s the idea, especially among men, that everything is better with bacon (spoiler, this dish has bacon, too!), but I think you can also include sausage in that argument. Who doesn’t love sausage, for crying out loud?! Interestingly, the bread used is sourdough, so you know it’s going to be a filling dish; but sourdough? Oh yeah! I love me some sourdough bread, which ranks right next to potato bread as my favorite. The herbs used adds splendidly to the pork sausage, which is a savory mix of sage, rosemary, thyme, parsley, and shallots. I no longer stuff the turkey, but I will give you one piece of advice if you do stuff your turkey. If you want your stuffing to have the flavoring of your turkey, ensure you mix the stuffing for the turkey with HALF of the liquid you would normally use, whether it’s water or stock. This allows the turkey drippings to fully hydrate your stuffing and provide a great consistency of flavor.

Side Note: If you don’t have the time or ability to make a gourmet-style stuffing, let me tell you what did a few years ago. I was on a tight budget, and the only stuffing I had was boxed Stove Top®. Wanting to not be so mundane, I decided to spruce it up a bit, and it didn’t take much time or effort to do so. I sautéed a mixture of onion, carrots, and celery and set it aside. I then toasted sliced almonds in a small amount of oil, then I cubed two apples and sautéed them in water and a small amount of sugar. I combined all of that with the stuffing mix in boiling chicken stock. Let me tell you… that apple-almond stuffing was to die for!

The Turkey

At last, we reach the climax of this feast! The turkey! I keep the turkey simple, I hope that’s not anticlimactic, but it doesn’t really take much. You especially save time if you don’t stuff it… Anyway, my goal every year is to determine the proper herbs and spices needed for the turkey based on my theme. This year, that theme is ‘earthy’.

My father taught me long ago that herbs and spices are the key to delicious food. And, when you play around with spices enough, you can come up with combinations that are unexpected, yet incredibly flavorful. Furthermore, for the more important meals, such as Thanksgiving Dinner, ALWAYS use fresh herbs and spices. Now, I’m not a walking dictionary of herbs and spices, so I do use Google to help me out. In searching for earthy flavors, I came across a list that had herbs that were considered such. In this case, I chose to use marjoram, parsley, basil, and chives.

The next key is determining which herb is going to be your base. Of the four herbs mentioned above, I chose marjoram for that base. The reasoning behind that was knowing that, of those herbs, the marjoram is the most aromatic. However, had I chosen a different theme, perhaps the most aromatic wouldn’t be suitable for the base; instances for this would be a theme of citrusy or savory. Using the most aromatic in those cases would ‘over-flavor’ the turkey and hide the flavor of the meat.

Once you’ve determined your herb combination, then it’s time for a bit of math and playing around. I chose the chives as the least prominent herb, as chives can overtake the the other flavors when fresh or wetted. So that became my “one part” herb. I then doubled that amount for the basil, parsley, salt, and pepper; then doubled again for the marjoram as the base. I will make quite a bit of this herb combination when I prepare the turkey, because half of it will be mixed with softened butter to be rubbed under the turkey’s skin, and the other half will be used as a dry rub.

The final step is the gravy. When the turkey has 90 minutes left to roast, I will remove it from the roaster so that I can retrieve two cups of broth resting at the bottom. That delectable liquid will then go in the freezer to separate. As the turkey is resting when the roasting time has expired, I will remove the broth from the freezer, scrape off the layer of congealed fat, and put the rest in a saucepan. I will bring it to a boil and then add a 3:2 mixture of cold water and flour to it. This will thicken the gravy and prepare it for the addition of pepper. I don’t mess around with making a rue or adding straight flour to the broth, I’ve never had ANY success in making a smooth gravy with those methods. Like I said, I’m no chef…

Good Eats

So, there you have it, folks! This is my Feast for Five. I will be utilizing a turkey roaster, a crockpot, the oven, and the stovetop, and I will be quite busy. But I won’t be busy all morning and I won’t have to awaken at an ungodly hour to get started. In fact, the family will be up somewhat early, but only to participate in a virtual 5K run/walk hosted by our local YMCA.

My time in the kitchen will begin at 10 AM, and I will even have a near two-hour timeframe where I can relax and enjoy the aromas of Thanksgiving Dinner filling the house.

When the food is all ready to eat, we will sit down and I will raise a toast to my family. We have decided to purchase some plastic champagne glasses and use soda as our means to toast each other. Just a little bit of fun for our intimate Thanksgiving Dinner.

I hope that you have enjoyed your journey through my holiday kitchen. I hope that your mouth is watering. And I hope that you have found a bit of inspiration as you face down your own fear of preparing a delicious holiday meal for your family. Remember, the Ghost of Thanksgiving Past is not a mean specter, he’s full of memories and aromas and tastes from your past, and he awaits your return to those days through a holiday menu of herb, spices, and some originality. Happy eats, reader! And Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours!

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