Thanksgiving table...any non-traditional foods this year?
Every family has "their own traditional foods". Perhaps this year, you are trying an out of the ordinary dish or recipe variation. Are you anticipating a guest or family member to bring an unusual side dish or dessert? Are you willing to change or add to your traditional menu?
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12 Comments:
We already had Thanksgiving (as you know :)) and I think the most uncharacteristic dish we had was the stuffing. It was made from cornbread, jalapenos, cranberries, pumpkin and sausage - a dish you would never imagine our family eating!
Hillary
Chew on That
Chew on That at 5:34PM on 11/08/07
Every year I say "how about we do something totally different this year?" and every year my family has a collective hissy fit at the very idea of changing anything. So I do something different on other days.
Ann Fisher at 6:35PM on 11/08/07
Because we lived in Europe so many years, Thanksgiving was just another day over there. So we often ate a nice meal out... esp. as turkey wasn't exactly a hot commodity in the markets. Italian, Thai, Flemish... it has become a tradition in our house to //not// eat turkey and stuffing on TG day.
TikiPundit at 10:27PM on 11/08/07
My family contains adventorous eaters; however, when it comes to Thanksgiving, we only want the traditional foods we grew up with. We save 'different' for another day!
Michigander at 11:30PM on 11/08/07
Great question..I think I will ponder it further for my blog. In the meantime I will say that this year I am trying to increase the vegetarian options whereas previously I preferred to insist on more carnivorous offerings. I would love to have guests contribute and I hope they feel so inclined (though that is a rarity).
izzy's mama at 12:02AM on 11/09/07
Our family, too, is filled with adventurous, recreational eaters.
But turkey day is almost always turkey day. Every few years we do something unusual. Once we did all fish (but mom still roasted a turkey to eat on sandwiches the next day).
Once when I was a teenager, my folks cooked everything on Wednesday and wrapped it all up in foil. Then, we went up to the mountains, built a campfire, and reheated everything in the embers. It was freezing (snowed part way through), but we had a blast!
This year, we're sticking with uber traditional.
LoCo at 2:09AM on 11/09/07
Thanksgiving is all about tradition. Actually, it's one of the very few holidays that both my family and I look forward to preparing same-old, same-old while yucking about preparing same-old, same-old.
Some things are just meant to be as they are.
drbehavior at 5:59AM on 11/09/07
We always have a core group of dishes that I usually supplement with a few extras that are different every year. We always have the same stuffing, spinach, green beans, and mashed potatoes. Sometimes things are so good (the brined turkey of 10 years ago, last year's cranberry sauce) that they become the new tradition.
This years extras are roasted brussels sprouts, Alton Brown's cornbread, and pumpkin bread pudding.
sobriquet at 10:59AM on 11/09/07
I have Thanksgiving with my brother (a vegetarian) and we do something different every year, generally carb centric though. Last year was roasted bell pepper soup with pasta, brushetta, onion rings (I don't know why, my brother really wanted them though), and possibly mashed potatoes... We also made Christmas cookies.
This year we're having a Mexican Thanksgiving- tamales, beans and rice, masa boats, roasted tomato soup and sweet potatoes with chile and orange.
The only traditional thing we keep is pumpkin pie.
lola27 at 12:48PM on 11/09/07
Since I'm not originally from the US and my huband and I are both vegetarians Thanksgiving is almost, almost like any other food day but because it is special I try to incoporate a lot of the foods we like plus a special dish. Last year's special dish was a sweet potatoe pie Caribbean style with pineapple slices, thai noodles with peanut sauce and fried tofu, eggplant parmisian and for desert I made a coconut pecan cake all for two people lol!
I don't know what i'm going to do this year but i'm sure I'll come up with something we will both enjoy.
love2eat at 5:10PM on 11/09/07
Our family's Thanksgiving has never included turkey or cranberry sauce or green bean casserole or those traditional Thanksgiving dishes.
My family are all fairly recent immigrants, so that probably accounts for why we prefer the food we do at our Thanksgiving get togethers.
The menu varies, there's usually plates of roast chicken, roast beef, stir fried green beans, some kind of seafood, maybe crab. My grandmother will usually bring a big crock of her famous zai, a dish made of entirely vegetarian ingredients like bean curd skin, rice vermicelli, and all kinds of mushrooms and fungus sauced with fu yu, a spicy, fermented bean curd.
However, there always has to be a big tray of sushi every year. I guess this addition just really spells "celebration" for everybody...
fuuchan at 12:33AM on 11/10/07
Here, on California's North Coast, the commercial crab season always opens just in time for Thanksgiving... so cold cracked crab is on lots of Thanksgiving tables here (including mine).
yogasuzi at 1:16AM on 11/10/07