Happy Thanksgiving Day, Everyone!

Thanksgiving Past - 2003

Last year we talked about holiday traditions and our favorite dishes.

This year, I would like you to tell us the dish that you absolutely hated as a child.

And a dish that you could easily leave OFF the T-day menu as a grownup.

Then, please share with us the ONE DISH that means Thanksgiving most to you and why.

It’s my turn to read and be entertained and blessed by your stories.

Desserts Past

We are going to Big Sis’s house for the meal and maybe some football, but I will be back here tonight and early tomorrow morning to read your offerings.

Push away from the table, folks!!!

BW

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50 Comments

  1. Happy Thanksgiving!

    As a child I hated mincemeat pie, so much so that I haven’t even tried it as an adult. I can live without cranberries and usually don’t even serve them.

    Thank you for sharing your pictures, family and place with us throughout the year!

    Karen Savage

  2. oops…forgot the dish that means Thanksgiving to me – I’m gonna cheat and say two – the Turkey and the Sweet Potato Pie!!

    🙂

  3. Cornbread dressing with lots of sage,Shelly is a yankee from NY and still does dressing out of white bread so every year one of my neighbors or sisters bring me a small pan of cornbread dressing.

    1. I made a recipe that I got from an old lady out in the country in central Louisiana a few years ago. It was the best I had ever eaten, and she’s been making it for 50 years! Time-tested for sure! You might like it, too! I am going to reduce the recipe, change one seasoning, call it my own and do a blog post about it soon.

  4. HAPPY THANKSGIVING,BW. Just got home from serving breakfast to about 2500 people.That in it self is a thanksgiving favorite of mine.But to say the less favorite dish that was served while growing up,would have to be squash and it still is.My favorite would be the apple/cranberry pie topped with crushed pecans.Just wanted to add,everyone celebrate Thanksgiving in your own way but please be careful.be safe and give thanks were it is due.Say a prayer for our soldiers.

  5. I love that frozen cranberry relish and oyster dressing.

    That Merliton stuff from choup is pretty right up there too.

    Pecan pie too but it’ll be pecan pancakes in am.

    So you don’t do Cowboys with left over dough?
    Maybe it is Indians? A French Kaintuck tradition
    of melted butter and cinnamon sugar on pie dough scraps. BIL calls it that I just don’t know if its a C-word or an I-word.

  6. As a kid Mom always pulled off the traditional Holidays and we thought it perfect every year. On those days I even ate yellow squash and liked it. As I grew up, the whole holiday thing changed. Sure we still had turkey or ham, all the pies and Cornbread dressing, those would have caused a revolution. Everything else changed though to what was fresh from the garden, mustard greens, cauliflower, broccoli, and thankfully yellow squash is not a fall garden item.

    I think C.E. has the right of it, the Holidays are about that warm feeling we get from a Sister’s laugh, a brother’s fishing story, a daughter’s cry when she drops a carton of eggs, or the boys screaming running thru the living room. It’s that feeling we get when he help others, not because it was the right thing to do but because it wasn’t expected or required. Its everyone smiling.

    As much as food has come to symbolize the holidays, its just another excuse to get family and friends together for a good time and there ain’t a coonass in this world that doesn’t know about that.

    I hope you all have a great holiday!

  7. Maybe but I got some to use up first and aren’t they better with a bit of drying?

    Dangities, I tried to post that as clear as possible.

    Posted on the CLF site run over and look. Ain’t you driving?

  8. I guess my least favorite dish was ambrosia, but I always ate it, because I would have felt guilty had I not, after all the work that goes into making it.

    My favorite now is RenRed’s fried turkey, and the dish that means thanksgiving to me is cornbread dressing, although I haven’t had any as good as Mama’s.

  9. Favorites (and a staple) is Cornbread dressing w/Giblet gravy and Smoked Turkey. I’ll NEVER make Oyster Dressing! It’s a sight and texture thing for me. (Love oysters FRIED (Crisp) and small enough to put thing whole thing in my mouth.) I’ll never fix Rice Dressing either…LIVER YUCK!

  10. I grew up in the north and one of the dishes we always had was a canned yam dish with marshmallows on the top. I do not like canned yams. I love fresh ones like we had today! As far as leaving something off the menu today. I don’t think there is one.

    1. My mom always made sweet potatoes with butter and sugar and then topped with tiny marshmallows, toasted in the oven/boiler. They were delicious. I have kept that tradition when I cook at my house.

  11. I like to eat, so it’s hard to pick something I don’t like. I usually pass on the rolls, leaving room for better stuff. There is always so much to choose from on Thanksgiving. My absolute favorite is the turkey back. I always sneak the piece of back meat I call the oyster. It has been baking in butter for hours and melts in your mouth. Cornbread dressing is always good, my mom has a killer recipe. One strange dessert my family loves is made with whipped cream, lemon jello, grated cheddar cheese, crushed pineapple and pecans. I know it sounds gross but it’s really good. Curried fruit is another strange thing we fix on holidays. It’s sweet and savory at the same time with a little kick of heat. Everybody always looks puzzled when they hear about it, I don’t even know where we got the recipe. Which reminds me, I forgot to bring any home with me.

    1. Oh, Patti, welcome to the blog. Nobody knows who you are yet, our newest reader and my new fishing buddy. They will know soon enough, though! About food: I want to make the cream/jello/cheese dessert, okay? And the curried fruit sounds good, too, but not “bayou or cajun” at all!!!

  12. Happy Thanksgiving to you & family, BW. I really never cared for pecan pie but can’t say that out loud in Texas. My favorite – the dressing, hot or cold. Allen says hi, too.

    1. Hi Susie and Allen! I’ve been missing y’all and wondered what has happened to you! Glad you are alive and well! Tell him hi for me, too. Ditto on the dressing!

  13. My mom always made the best and still does, cornbread dressing. I make her recipe but, it doesn’t taste the same to me. But it has to be on the menu.

    She also made creamed corn and also english peas. UGH! Can’t stand either of them but if I have to have one, I’ll try the corn. I even pick the peas out of those styrofoam cups of dried noodles you pour boiling water into. Can’t stomach those things at all.

    Hubby like mincemeat pies and mom makes her own true, mincemeat. It actually has meat in it like the old fashioned stuff and she cans it each year. I’ll bake his pie but, I could easily leave it off of the menu.

    I know what BluFloyd is talking about. Mom always laid the extra/left over pie crust pieces on a cookie sheet and sprinkled them with cinnamon sugar and baked them for us as a treat. OH BOY! Love them. Since I can’t make a pie crust worth eating, I use the frozen ones in a pan or buy them in the box from the freezer section. I am guilty of using the whole box or both shells to spead out, sprinkle and bake for the kids & grandkids. Of course mama gets some too.

    Our Thanksgiving was simple with only two of us here and we had a roasted turkey breast, cornbread dressing, candied sweet potatoes, fresh onions & jalepenos from the garden (striped the plants this am before the freeze tonight), giblet gravy, homemade yeast rolls, pecan pie, chocolate pie, pumpkin pie, and hubbys pie. Lots of left overs!

    1. Oh my goodness, what a spread for two people. It’s just hard not to cook all your favorites for Thanksgiving, isn’t it? My mom never baked those kinds of pies, so I missed out on that. HOWEVER, when I make my sweet potato pies, I bake shaped cookies from the leftover dough, sort of the same. The sugar-cinnamon strips sound good, though.

  14. You know? I don’t think my family put anything on the Thanksgiving table when I was growing up that I DIDN’T like!

    They didn’t fix English peas, asparagus, beets or spinach, which I do not care for, so I was lucky, there.

    The best? Dressing. Any kind but my Granny’s was the best, ever. I would sneak into the kitchen in the late afternoon and filch a piece of it from the icebox, run out behind the smokehouse and eat it cold. It was that good! (We weren’t supposed to be getting into the icebox in between meals!)

    She saved up all her leftover bread slices for some days ahead of time. I’m not sure what all she put in it besides onion, celery, a little sage and probably some salt/pepper. I can remember her dipping the drippings from the hen baking in a pan on the top rack of the oven into the big pan of dressing on the bottom rack as they cooked. Her dressing had a consistency somewhat like bread pudding and was sliced in the pan, then put on a serving platter.

    She didn’t fix a turkey. There were too many hens running around the farm to be spending money on a turkey. In fact, I couldn’t tell you how old I was before I even tasted turkey. Most of what was served was raised right there on the farm. We’d have a baked hen, a ham, rice, dressing, gravy, either green beans, crowder peas or butter beans, macaroni pie, a squash casserole, a sweet potato casserole, maybe some other casserole that Mama or one of the aunts would fix if they’d run across something interesting in a magazine or the newspaper and wanted to try, coleslaw, maybe a congealed salad of some type, various homemade pickles and relishes. Thanksgiving and Christmas were known for Granny’s made from scratch desserts: pound cake, 5 layer cocoanut cake (simply mah-veh-lous!), fruit cake and, of course, the ambrosia. It wasn’t Thanksgiving or Christmas without the ambrosia.

    1. I haven’t made ambrosia in several years, but I want to start making it again for some occasion during the year to honor my mother. Daddy loved it, so she labored over those fresh oranges to make it just right. About your mom’s dressing–did she use any cornbread at all? Or was it all white bread?

      1. It was all white bread. She may have made cornbread dressing on occasion but I don’t recall it.

        Granny would make Papa and the ‘boys’ (Dad and his brothers) hull out the oranges for the ambrosia the night before. They’d squeeze a few just for the juice. She’d add the bananas and coconut and, of course we had to have a scattering of maraschino cherries. That was it; no other ingredients.

        I do recall seeing her crack and shred a real coconut. It was a lot of work but she saw the light after a while and started buying a bag of the pre-shredded.

  15. Everyone, thanks so much for sharing your least and most favorite holiday menu items. Some of you reminded me of things I have been missing and the importance of carrying on traditions. However, tradition is good if it’s tasty–not if you end up throwing most of it away. Then you’ve wasted your time and resources, as well as food.

    I wish you all warmth and love as 2010 draws to a close. I’ll be here posting and keeping it semi-real as often as I can!

  16. You yammerin sweet tater peeps ought try the Choupiquer way.

    Olive oil rub the fork pricked yams sprinkle with rosemary basil and whatever. Wrap in foil bake at 375 for hour or so while you are baking other goodies. butter is all you need. I used to be a brown sugar or marshmallow guy but I make these 3 at a time in winter.

    Off to google ambrosia before the crappie whacking at 2.
    35 mph wind and 30 degrees up from 19.

  17. Yesterday I had a REAL Chef sitting next to me at my kitchen table eating our Thanksgiving meal. (He did some eating too) I offered him Ambrosia (as well as other desserts) and he asked me what I put in my Ambrosia. I replied, “it’s not what most people put, but I do it the way my grandmother made it…navel oranges and coconut”. He congratulated me, and said “that’s how it’s supposed to be made, anything else and it’s a fruit salad.” (Those could be fighting words for some people)
    All I know is…some people put this and that to their liking, but the less I have to clean and cut up, the better. It’s still a pain to mess with all those navels. I do save A LOT of time prepping the oranges though. *** SHORT CUT TIP *** cut them in half and use a grapefruit spoon to get the meat out. Then give the peeling a good squeeze to release the rest of the juice.

      1. Jean Pierre Daigle (aka J.P. my daughter-in-law’s brother) Since becoming a father, he only “cooks” twice a week now in N.O. The rest of the time he teaches music.

  18. Couple things came to mind that show up at gatherings, I never want to see again. That green bean onion and soup mess, And while not at Turkey day usually, Taco Salad.

    I’ve ice fished with a couple chefs up here. Chef Tod and my buddy Todd’s brother the Chef. Confused yet? It is more convoluted than this really.

    1. Oh, Lori. Whose yeast rolls? Would that be on your mom’s side? I don’t remember Wilson or Owsley grandmother making yeast rolls . . . . glad the family came to you. I miss seeing them.

  19. One more thing . . . . my least and most favorites:

    As a child, my least favorite was squash.

    My most favorite then and now : DRESSING!

    My least favorite as an adult is NOTHING!

  20. Oh, and one more thing that has fallen off the menu in recent years that I like to have . . . a relish tray consisting of: little pearl onions, sweet midgets, and baby dills. Daddy loved them. Maybe that’s why I did, too.

  21. I didn’t see this post until today. The one thing that was always on our table and I couldn’t figure out how to duplicate until this year was my Grandma’s oyster dressing. My second batch was it, that was the one that was exactly right. I sat down at the table with a bowl and cried! Now if I can master the pecan pie I’ll be doing great. It was so good, I almost don’t want to mess with it just so I have the memories to look back on.

    1. Maybe I should do a test kitchen on pecan pie recipes? I’m sure Steffi has a fail-safe recipe. Mostly we just do the one on the Karo bottle and they come out pretty darn good!!!!

      Who would like to send in a GREAT no fail pecan pie recipe?????