What's on your Thanksgiving Table?
It’s that time again, and inquiring minds would like to know what your family traditions are for Thanksgiving. Let’s talk about whether we do a traditional New England meal or Cajun Cuisine or just some Down the Bayou Family Favorites!
I’ll get the ball rolling with ours.
Having grown up in North Louisiana, we typically had the turkey, cornbread dressing, dinner rolls, cranberry sauce, and sweet potato casserole meal. Once I moved to South Louisiana and married a Houma Indian, that changed. Well, it not so much changed, as I had to prepare two meals—one traditional and one bayou style.
My husband won’t eat turkey. He says that’s the ugliest bird to walk the earth, and since they don’t have any down this bayou, his ancestors would not have put one on their Thanksgiving table. Instead, the Houma Indians used what was in abundance. At this time of year, that’s oysters!
In addition to traditional fare, I also fry freshly-shucked oysters and serve them with home-cooked white beans and rice!
And let’s not forget everyone’s favorite replacement for pumpkin pie . . .
Sweet Potato Pie, made from the Houma Indian secret recipe!
Now, it’s your turn to share!
And what warms the heart more during the holidays than family photos?
Photos of the new pets. This is “Butch”, Termite’s new puppy. His big brothers gave it to him with strict instructions on how to train him (yea, right?) and not ruin him (yea right again!).
Look how faithful, lying on Termite’s hunting boots.
This is his pensive, thoughtful look. He was quite a poser . . .
until TiDu came along and spoiled his moment in the spotlight. She is not jealous at all, no, not one bit!
Well, I must need to have my head examined having four people and two dogs living in this camp.
Have a great day and try not to overindulge!
BW
We have the trukey, cornbread dressing, mashed potatoes, green beans, and homemade yeast rolls…
Then we also have to have a fruit salad my dad always made with bananas, apples, oranges, and grapes tossed in a very small amount of Helman’s mayo. I usually bring this in his memory. The rolls are Granma Izzie’s recipe and SisP fixes these. She also fixes the brocolli(SP?) casserole each year. BabySis always lijkes to bring either a new dessert or a new salad. My niece, T, brings baked beans and usually a blackberry cobbler. There are always the traditional homemade pumpkin, apple, and pecan pies plus any new dessert recipes that are being tested ; )
There are usually anywhere from 15-25 adults and kids, family and friends, that stuff themselves on all these goodies.
HAPPY THANKSGIVING
Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family from way out in Idaho. My favorite part of Thanksgiving is the nap after the indulging.
Over here in South Mississippi we have oysters too, they’re just usually in a stuffing! Mama always made a regular bread stuffing plus an oyster stuffing for the holidays. She also used to often make an oyster stew. The rest of the traditional Thanksgiving meal is always, always roasted turkey, baked ham, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans, corn, sweet potatoes, homemade yeast rolls and cranberry sauce. Desserts are sweet potato pie, pumpkin pie and pecan pie. Naps are mandatory, and shortly thereafter it’s time to eat some more! Midnight snacks are typically white bread, mayo and piles of leftover turkey meat. YUM!
Thanks for visiting Mary! You look like quite a cook and photographer. By the way, I’m a plain old sugar cookie!!! Happy Holidays!
What a feast you had!
Here we had one of our homegrown turkeys, red-skinned mashed potatoes and gravy, diced yams with spiced apples and cranberries, green beans with water chestnuts and mushrooms, beets in orange sauce, pears in raisin cider sauce, corn bread, homemade yellow squash, zucchini and aristocrat pickles, homemade apple cider, wine, and for dessert–pumpkin pie, hickory nut cake and mincemeat pie. Now I’m ready to sleep!
Got to make a comment about Butch before talking food. The second pic is absolutely wonderful, but the third one is my favorite. It says, “I’m masculine, I’ve got attitude, do what you want, just do not mess with me”. Beautiful dog. I hope Termite trains him well.
Now the food. Smoked turkeys, smoked ham, cornbread dressing, giblet gravy, sweet potato crunch, corn, green bean casserole (not the one with the onion rings, mine is better!) yeast rolls, cranberries,pumpkin pie, ambrosia and Oreo truffles. Ok, so we O.D. on carbs, sounds like a lot of others do also. We usually have more desserts, but I didn’t have the time to make more. I was out of town yesterday, right BW? I think I’ll skip checking my blood tonight. It would be a waste of time, blood, and a perfectly good test strip!
My parent’s were raised up “north” where BW is from. My mother always cooked the same things as her mother. We had the usual roasted turkey, candied yams, lots and lots of fresh veggies and homemade dinner rolls. She’s bake mincemeat, pecan and pumpkin pies. I was almost an adult before I learned there were other fare to have for holiday meals. I married a Cajun guy and my taste buds bloomed. His family made oyster dressing, oyster stew, fried turkey (before they became popular), a pot roast and gravy, and mostly no veggies except shrimp-stuffed miritons. And the table was never, ever without baked mac and cheese. With gravy on it. The roast was cooked mainly for the gravy. If you haven’t tried it, DO. It’s very good.
Now we mesh both family’s menus except for the oyster dressing and the mincemeat pie. All the folks that liked the oyster dressing are no longer with us and I’m the only one left that likes mincemeat.
Next year I’m thinking of invitin’ myself to Granny Sue’s house. Your menu sounds absolutely wonderful. I’d love the recipes for the pears, yams and the hickory nut cake. Hey, I might be able to snag myself a wedge of your mincemeat pie!
Those are two cutie pie pups ya got there BW. Is Termite going to teach Butch to hunt with him? I really like his name. Now I’m intrigued. What’s the secret of the Houma Indian Sweet Potato Pie recipe?
Happy Thanksgiving everyone.
If I weren’t so full, all these things would sound delicious!!!
By now, has anyone figured out that Katy Bug’s mom was my aunt? LOL!
And if I told you the secret to the sweet potato pie, it would no longer be a secret!!!!
Happy Recovery to you All and to All a Rolaids Night!!!
BW
Everyone, you might have missed the post from Wednesday about Our Home Part 2. Please be sure and back up and check it out so you’ll see what BB and I got done.
Thanks!
BW
I want your recipe for those!!! The pie looks like a wonderment in itself!! Milk Man and I want to try oysters, but are not wanting to be disapointed with canned ones and the ones that are ‘fresh’ are SO expensive!!! BUT – I would splurge if I had a good recipe!..
We have Turkey, Ham, mashed potatos, sweet potatoes, corn and several other sides like an apple salad, jello salad, candies etc… its just like another Christmas dinner at our house. 🙂
Heidi, do you have any help with all that cooking?
The fried oysters are very easy. We use a boxed product called Fish Fri that is a great coating for frying fish, shrimp, and oysters. However, some people use cracker meal, some use a mixture of corn meal and flour, and some use just a dusting of flour. They are deep fried golden in vegetable oil.
The white bean recipe is under Bayou Woman Cooks called Les Bines Blanc–The White Beans with step by step photos. Or type “white beans” in the search bar up there under the banner!
We were at my m-i-l’s in Utah and had four different types of jello salad.
My Thanksgiving table this year was a mix of traditional (for us) and non-traditional. I had to make two recipes of everything, one for me and one for my guests in order to stick to the diet my doctor put me on (but I am down twenty eight pounds, so I am not complaining). We had a roasted turkey, bread dressing (which I could not have), green bean cassarole for the guest and garlic/lemon pepper green beans for me. Two kinds of sweet potatos (sweet potato casserole for the guests and baked sweet potatos for me). We had two kinds of cranberry sauce: homemade the regular way for my guests and homemade with the natural sweetner stevia for me. We had rice and broccoli too. Hubby wanted rolls, so he made those. There were three pies for dessert…hubby made lemon pie and blueberry pie for the guests, and I made a homemade, low-carb, nut crust and sweetened with stevia pumpkin pie that I could have. Yum!!!!!!!! Hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving.
‘awesome salad’ (stuff from the regular garden and volunteers from the compost with sprouts from under the bird feeders. sunflower sprouts are the best.) turkey, ham, dressing*, mashed potatoes, and boatloads of gravy. cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes with apples, pecan pie, pumpkin pie.
*dressing is way over rated. i prefer eating nekkid.
Deb – I didn’t know there were so many variations to Jell-O Salad!!!
Carol – Sounds like you were very busy in the kitchen, but all the food sounds delicious and some even healthy!
Rick – Let’s see, your blog name has Cornbread in it, but yet dressing, I’m assuming it’s cornbread, is over rated? And is nekkid anything like birthday suit?!!! You are one complicted human being, Rick! You’ll fit right in here!
BW
Sweet… back home to the internet and snow. Lots of both.
Always good to come back home. The River dog missed me.
Thanksgiving dinner at Fourchon? Ham turkey and colby cheese sandwich from the Grand Isle grocery and sweet potato backed with cracked pepper and olive oil in foil ala Choupiquer. I plan on catching up on cranberries soon. Not DCCDC’s either.
Of course the leftovers arrived later……