1:13:36 is the start of the induction, if you want to skip up towards Group W.
Can people brag about what they're making for Thanksgiving? I'm not making anything because the feast we're going to is overseen by someone with a rigid menu plan and a need to cook everything himself. I kind of like not being on the hook for anything, but I also know I'm going to miss the compliments I fish for when I bring a moderately elaborate dish to a Thanksgiving meal.
[And 59:43 if you want to go to the Massacre.]
2: we made some extra delicious sauerkraut.
Sweet Potato Souffle
4 lbs sweet potatoes 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon salt 1/2 cup evaporated milk
3/4 cup sugar 1/2 cup chopped pecans
1/2 cup raisins 4 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon lemon juice 1/2 cup shredded coconut
2 eggs (beaten)
Boil and mash sweet p. Mix ingredients. bake @ 350 for 30 min. Recipe from Mrs. Wilkes When mother makes this, she uses various substitutes to make it healthier (splenda, oil for butter), but I am going whole hog.
I'm only responsible for pumpkin pie, so I'm putting in some effort: homemade crust (members: oh! oh!) and a Smitten Kitchen recipe incorporating sweet potatoes as well.
Latkes cooked in duck fat, plus Brussels sprouts with bacon and Parmesan to balance out the Jewishness.
I'm taking a short sandwich break in the middle of pie hell. It's actually going better than usual, because I remembered to make the crust over the weekend this year.
I'm planning to serve both white and yellow turnips, separately, which I think gives me serious root-vegetable cred.
I am a little at sea, because I have a vegetarian coming, and I have to keep on remembering not to put bacon/chicken broth/entire veal carcasses in the vegetable dishes. It's doable, but it puts me off balance.
I'm going out to eat prime rib tonight, to get the stomach set for eating Turkey tomorrow. Also I did Fran today and had a pathetic time.
Kid D has a friend who is 10 I think, with an American mother, and a Colombian father. The friend was telling my kid about their plans for Thanksgiving, which include listening to Alice's Restaurant. I thought that would please you all. Now I have to pay it to kid D tomorrow so she can understand what the friend was talking about.
I'm not making anything because the feast we're going to is overseen by someone with a rigid menu plan and a need to cook everything himself.
Does it make me a bad person if I'm not crazy about people bringing food to dinner at my place? The kitchen is so small, and if you let people bring stuff they want to be in the kitchen dealing with it, and then the knife fights start.
My dad brings the cranberry sauce, but he's literally grandfathered in. And another couple is bringing salad, but they got permission from Buck -- I'd really rather they didn't.
No, the small-kitchen thing is totally understandable, as is wanting to decide the menu for a dinner party you're throwing. I had just gotten used to a more anarchic tradition with a big group of friends who had Thanksgiving together for ten years or so. Basically there would be 10 or more people in and out of the kitchen for several hours, and some memorable knife fights.
As long as the knife fights are infrequent enough to remain memorable.
Sigh -- I'm doing nothing for Thanksgiving this year, and it's totally my fault, because I've been wrapped up with work and neglecting my friends. (Though moving across the country two years ago, and having a job that doesn't provide many opportunities to meet people, isn't very helpful either.) Anyway, maybe this is a good occasion for me to try cooking something new, since I won't have to be embarrassed if it's a disaster?
Last year someone invited me to a church dinner, which was sort of hilarious. The turkey looked like it had been carved by an army of mice wielding tiny chainsaws.
We eat a fair amount of turkey during the year so we use Thanksgiving as a day to indulge in red meat. We have a 9lb top sirloin roast in the fridge.
Bread and cheese, fruit platter, veggie platter, latkes, sweet potato latkes, butternut squash soup, turkey, cornbread stuffing, cornbread, sweet potatoes, brussels sprouts, beer, wine, apple cobbler, pumpkin cookies, pumpkin pie, vanilla ice cream. 4 kids, 7 adults. Pretty standard.
I have a google doc assigning dishes to everyone.
I'm going with my L.A. kids to a traditional family dinner this year. The last two Thanksgiving holidays were emotionally surreal, this one should be "normal". I will quite easily be satisfied with that.
Lee ordered a half turkey and mac and cheese from a soul food restaurant and will be making greens. I also have to make deviled eggs according to her aunt's recipe, mashed potatoes, brussels sprouts, stuffing, and apple pie with whipped cream (first time using a store-bought crust, so fingers crossed). I think that's it, but it's ridiculous to have so much food for the five of us and my vegetarian brother. Other friends will drop by for dessert and Nia invited her teacher, too, which is adorable.
"Ridiculous to have so much food" is the true meaning of Thanksgiving.
15 It's a bit late for buying ingredients but the couple times I was in that situation and wanted to make something I found that heritage breed ducks are great. They're a bit small for two people but perfect sized for one plus duck soup leftovers.
Well that was a brining adventure. The tub I usually use had a dead mouse in it, which made Blume somewhat chary of continuing to use it, but luckily I am only cooling turkey for 10 this year, which means that the delightfully modest-sized bird fit not only in this giant stock pot we have, but actually fit in the fridge in that stock pot.
Still sucks for the mouse, of course.
I like deviled eggs and mouseless poultry.
It's just the three of this year, and we're not huge fans of turkey to have leftovers for a week, and I thought it would be funny to take a picture of the Calabat in front of a roasted Cornish hen and pretend he was the world's most giant baby, so I'm roasting hens.
And then shiv thought it would be funnier if we also had a miniature pumpkin pie to set next to the hen. So he used the leftover crust and filling to make a little pie. And we have little pearl onions to plate as garnish. And we'll put mashed potatoes in a ramekin. GIANT BABY!
Also just the three of us this year, so I'm going relatively low key. Mashed sweet potato, sliced Brussels sprouts with lemon, some slightly random apple-herb stuffing, stovetop gravy, CI's silken pumpkin pie, and then because I'm not totally insane, just a turkey breast, roasted. The economics of the situation are such that the 5lb breast cost about as much as a decent 15lb-or-so full bird, but, well, I'm paying to avoid all that work and waaaay too much leftovers.
24: You could make a Brussels sprout stand in for a head of cabbage.
24 is great. It might be hard but you should totally try to use forced perspective in some of the shots. Servants of giant baby.
I'm just making a pie, as is traditional.
I'm eating KFC for Thanksgiving. Apparently they have some sort of Thanksgiving menu? Otherwise it's fried chicken and fries. Or maybe I'll branch out I'd try their mashed potatoes. The main drawback is they don't serve beer. I wonder if I could BYO?
Anyways, if I were cooking Thanksgiving, I would serve 1) sweet potato latkes and 2) turbrisket. That is brisket, stuffed into turkey, stuffed into brisket.
Actually, I probably wouldn't, since I always go to my college roommate's family's house for Thanksgiving, and am near the bottom of the totem pole for menu input. They are Jewish so there will probably be turkey and brisket but not combined together. I could also probably convince them to try sweet potato latkes, if not for Thanksgiving then for maybe the day after. Anyways, my roommate's mother is an excellent cook and her family is like my family, so I am a little sad to miss Thanksgiving this year.
When you store a tub big enough to brine a turkey, be sure to put a little grain and a small container of water in the tub. That way, the mouse won't die as quick.
Maybe quick would have been better? Poor little bastard, trying to climb the sides...
4 -- Zuurkool. The Pilgrims surely ate it in Leiden, and maybe brought it with them.
Compared to humans, I think it wouldn't take a mouse long to die of starvation. They have very fast metabolisms.
Also susceptible to cold, if they have nothing to burrow in.
I daydreamed for a minute about making a pecan pie but apparently there's a pecan shortage and also (this came up earlier, right?) I like a chewy pecan pie rather than a gelatinous one and I began to get the idea, looking around the internet, that not everyone uses the terms chewy and gelatinous as I do. People would say like "no danger of this recipe coming out gelatinous which is great because I don't like a gooey pie" and I was all "those are really diff and gooey is fine" and then I stopped talking to the internet.
Oh man I just played 2.5 hours of hockey, I think my fluid/electrolyte balance is messed up.
Part of my family's Christmas eve tradition is small olive oil coated roasted potatoes with sardines. One year my mom noticed that there were some bite marks on the olive oil cap and joked about mouse flavored oil. Someone else then went to get more oil and there was a mouse floating at the bottom. Is this a violation of the prohibition of meat on Christmas Eve? Not sure, but those were damn good potatoes, very flavorful.
Maybe I should boil some of the turkey brine and drink it.
If it was at the bottom, was it really floating?
It was hard to tell if it was resting on the bottom or floating just above it. And things got moved around a bit as everyone took a close look. We threw ought the oil but we finished the potatoes.
I'm having Thanksgiving on Sunday, since I couldn't really convince anyone to eat a giant meal on Thursday, properly.
Menu is as follows, for four: cranberry margaritas, smoked salmon blinis (I'm lazy), roasted turkey with pan gravy, Suzanne Goin's kale dressing (which is seriously amazing), balsamic braised brussels sprouts with pancetta, bourbon and maple sweet potatoes, and two pies (maybe): pecan for sure, according to LB's Rose Levy Berenbaum's recipe, and banana cream pie.
I woke up this morning with a start realizing that with all the other preparations, I hadn't bought any potatoes -- rutabagas, turnips, sweet potatoes, brussels sprouts, but not a white potato to be seen. Wouldn't be Thanksgiving without a panicky run to the store.
I'm having Thanksgiving on Sunday, since I couldn't really convince anyone to eat a giant meal on Thursday, properly.
That's what my family traditionally do, but as my parents have just moved and my brother and his family are in the process of moving, it looks like we're skipping Thanksgiving altogether this year. On the other hand, a colleague of mine made pumpkin pie for my birthday, so I haven't missed out on the experience completely.
Feeling much better now. Woke up and was the lowest weight I've been in over a year. I guess that's a good position to be in to start the day.
I'm doing a turkey dinner this weekend.
Today I am making a chocolate cream pie.
Woke up and was the lowest weight I've been in over a year.
Your leg fell off?
Woke up and was the lowest weight I've been in over a year.
Your leg fell off?
Turned into a bug.
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For those of you needing a bit of reading today, here's a very interesting piece on what has happened to the Heritage Foundation. May already have been posted, but if so I missed it.
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The people who drew Maid Mariam in the Tom and Jerry version of Robin Hood weren't big on subtlety.
43: I wouldn't be able to buy potatoes on Thanksgiving, since the supermarkets are all closed. In my family we don't eat white potatoes on Thanksgiving, because they are not considered traditional.
I've got brussels sprouts and deviled eggs done and have the potatoes in the crock pot, which I hope won't be a disaster. We'll drive the 40 minutes to pick up my brother and then do stuffing and eventually the pie. I think we'll do a version of this pie without the caramel sauce and see how it goes. Then I'll have an extra crust to do pumpkin if I'm inclined that way, or maybe later in the weekend.
Oh, and I think I decided to do dukkah as the spice mix on the sauteed sweet potato chunks. Live-blogging menu planning is not very exciting. Nor was chopping the sweet potatoes.
The family bringing appetizers will be two hours late. The family bringing desserts is already here. We may be able to reason our way to a solution to this problem.
Happy thanksgiving all!
As posted elsewhere, the menu today is cheese course with spiced nuts, fresh baked bread., f fennel salad, sage dressing, mashed root vegetables, savory corn pudding (may be subbed out for mashed potatos at the last minute), steamed kale, creamed onions, cranberry sauce, turkey (half smoked and grilled, half roasted), gravy, pumpkin pie, apple tart and antacids, 6 adults, 3 kids--may have overdone it, but I like to freeze a bunch of leftovers and have Thanksgiving dinner again in April.
I like to freeze a bunch of leftovers and have Thanksgiving dinner again in April.
Go for the burn.
I like to freeze a bunch of leftovers and have Thanksgiving dinner again in April.
Go for the burn.
Your leg fell off?
My MIL has a prosthetic leg. We had our 1st grader's teacher conference and the teacher was showing us his Spanish writing and saying how he used a lot of detail, like the assignment where he had to describe his family and wrote about his grandmother and said that she had short legs. We said no, the writing says una pierna corta, not las piernas cortas, and that's because she had one leg amputated, she thought he had just made a grammar mistake and she was so embarrassed.
My turkey looks super dope. I might have overcooked the dark meat slightly, we'll see.
62: Isn't it usually the white meat that gets overcooked?
I was born on Thanksgiving Day, and today is my 45th birthday. So I've got two years left to start balding and find a house with a basement.
I made chicken, lentil and spinach curry, which the baby ate with surprising relish considering it was adult-level spicing. Nothing to do with Thanksgiving, but I thought I should join in with the food discussion.
chicken liver mousse
Based on the earlier discussion I read that as chicken liver mouse.
55: I LOVE dukkah! Sounds like a good combination!
I've wound up with no T-giving plans at all. Which is fine. I was thinking earlier about going to the vegetarian potluck at the collectively-owned cafe, but there may be people there I don't want to see, and my back hurts and I'm tired. So if my back feels better, I think I will just make some pasta and drink some wine and read and go to sleep early. Sigh.
Attempted football game. 4 year old does not get the concept- cried whenever he didn't have the ball, and when he did have it ran to the bushes and threw it in.
Maybe I should make Skanksgiving my new tradition, and listen to all my Jamaican ska cds.
I used this recipe, and I think it's going to be good, but it was pretty easy to strain - I'm suspecting the straining was not necessary since I used canned pureed sweet potato rather than candied "yams".
For Thanksgivukkah grandparents gave kids lots of foreign bank notes they had collected over the years. They were excited at first because there was a 2000 Mexican peso note (~$150) but then realized it was old pesos. Lots of expired European currency, not sure what to do with that (drachmas, lire, pesetas.) Kenyan, South African, Australian, Jamaican, Costa Rican, Canadian, Indonesian, British, US $2.
Aren't all $2 bills required by law to be taped on or near a tip jar?
74: I'm curious what you'll think of the pie crust. I tried it for a strawberry-rhubarb pie last year. It was flaky and tasty, but I ended up eating really small slices because it was just so overwhelmingly buttery. I tried the Cook's Illustrated one instead of my normal version, and it looks like a winner.
Our menu is dull and standard because it's just the two of us, but I'm making myself maple-bourbon sweet potatoes, which are delicious.
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OMG OMG! I have successfully submitted my application for an Obamacare ACA MD exchange health insurance plan! !!! (Warning: the site does not like pop-up blockers.)
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Off to dinner. My contribution: curried sweet potato soup, super simple.
1 coarsely chopped onion
olive oil and/or butter
2 tsp. curry powder
water or stock or chicken bouillon etc., appx. 6 cups
50/50 sweet potatoes and white potatoes, cubed, about 1 lb.
appx. 1 cup corn - fresh or frozen or canned
In a soup pot, saute onion in olive oil/butter on low, covered, until nearly tender. Add curry powder, stir around until delicious odors emanate.
Add stock and potatoes, bring to boil, reduce to simmer, until potatoes are fork-tender. Add more water/stock if needed: this is soup.
Immersion blend the whole shebang until potatoes are smooth, stock incorporated fully. Add water/stock if too thick. Season with salt and pepper.
Lastly throw in the corn, let things incorporate. Top with parsley, sour cream (or plain yogurt).
Also, neighbors have a big inflatable dreidel on their lawn.
71: Ditto. I'm working today just to build up a bit of comp time for later. I suspect dinner this evening will involve the microwave.
I think there needs to be some push back against the whole "oh, how horrible it is to force people to work on Thanksgiving or Black Friday thing". I always used to go in to the stock brokerage on Black Friday because:
1. You get brownie points with the boss
2. It's usually pretty dead
3. I was never traveling, so it gave other folx a chance to take time off if they were.
And with regard to retail workers, obviously it is fucked up when workers get trampled to death because of door-buster deals, but if you take a retail job, you know that Black Friday rolling around means you will be working long hours, it will be crazy and you will be pretty worn out by the end of the weekend. People who work in the operations side of the financial industry pretty much always have to come in on New Year's Eve, January 2nd and April 15th to deal with a million calls and problems. If you're a plumber, Mondays are always busy. If you're a lineperson for the power company, you know a big storm means a bunch of overtime. Retail just happens to have that one day that everyone talks about because the advertising is ubiquitous and scenes of people lining up at 3 am for the new gew-gaw make good local human interest fodder for TV news. It's not the end of the world, just a particularly busy work day for a chunk of the population.
77 last: That's on my list this year, too! I've never made the recipe before (this one has coffee in it?) but I like the sound of it.
81: I worked Thanksgiving as a teenager/young adult. I never much minded, but I was not in charge of food preparation and we weren't travelling or anything. Also, because it was at a movie theatre, the shifts weren't onerous and the atmosphere was always very festive (people tend to be happy at the movies). However, I'd never want to do one of the awful shifts they require in retail, or deal with crazed shoppers, or when I was the one doing the preparation of the meal.
Dinner is almost all ready, except for the (hilariously small) pile of Brussels sprouts, and the dressing that's got another 20 minutes to go.
I just realized that Thanksgiving is traditionally a moderately-serious drinking occasion in my family, and that's harder to swing with two adults who are nominally both responsible for a toddler.
jerked spatchcocked quail, grilled outdoors.
Totally, toddlers don't hold their liquor well.
63: if you cook like a rookie, sure. No, the recipe I use solves that, generally. This year's was pretty awesome but the skin could have been crispier.
81: I think days like Black Friday (where it's all hands on deck) or the nutty opening at midnight make it hard for people to get childcare and disrupt normal work schedules. I wish that working on days like that would be rewarded with overtime pay or something, but that's total fantasy on my part. I have certainly worked (fast casual restaurant, grad school, current job) on Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Xmas Eve, etc., but it was/is easy for me to do.
82: Mine are based on this recipe, but with less sweet and a little more savory (salt & pepper) and orange instead of lemon. They never taste quite right until I add the flamed bourbon, but I usually forget that detail and panic that I've ruined them.
Maybe I should make Skanksgiving my new tradition
Hell yes. I'm totally on board with this but I'm picturing a Skanksgiving more along the lines of Slutoween.
I had dinner with my ex's family, as that also equals Thanksgiving with my son. Since I was just a guest, I only ended up making the turkey, the gravy, the mashed potatoes, and the haricots verts. I do wish I could generate about 3x as much gravy without cooking additional turkeys, as I do love my gravy.
Now on my way to the airport and then a second massive turkey dinner tomorrow (too late for the meetup, alas).
One of these days I'm going to manage to get the duck skin properly crispy. I've got to say I'm disappointed that I can cook a far inferior animal (chicken) far better.
For the fourth year in a row, we ordered from the Boston Market catering menu. Makes life so much easier, especially considering it was just me, Mr. Robot, and a prof friend (who teaches in AWB's general discipline).
81: But really, there's no need. The stores could just open at 8am. It would be fine. People should get a holiday.
Plus, I am sick of Christmas starting in October and then not having an actual holiday for Thanksgiving. People take jobs in retail, often because they need them, not because they want to.
"You're a better bird than I am, Roasted Hen."
Easier, Dr. Robot? Or more pointless?
Zardoz mostly refused the Gerber baby food turkey and gravy, and ate up bunches of mashed sweet potato with coconut milk and red curry. She went on a swing for the first time today. My sister has been disappearing periodically over the course of the day, and I realized earlier this evening that she's been really upset about our mom and escaping to cry. I made amazing gravy using the pan drippings and the last of the stock I'd made with last year's turkey.
Nia's first grade teacher just left after hanging out for two hours. She said she's never been invited to a student's house for a holiday before and she was thrilled about it. My brother is staying the night and being a great sport about letting the little girls climb on him. Mara and Selah are sleeping with full stomach. It turns out Selah really loves greens, which I thought she might, but also the cranberry sauce was a big hit with her. Both Nia's and Mara's moms called (and Selah's doesn't have my number, so her silence is no reflection on her) and I think I'm becoming one of those people who appreciates Thanksgiving now that I'm a mom.
Sounds enjoyably domestic. Maybe a big drink now.
OT: which of the Tamora Pierce books should my son read first?
Sorry, the choices are Circle of Magic, Protector of the Small Quartet, or The Immortals. Thanks!
I think alphabetical order is best.
77: The crust was good, but on the tough side - I think I overworked the butter into the flour.
The pie was very good, prompting one guest to interrupt his apologies for his imminent departure and take seconds.
I'm going to assume 101 is to me. There is indeed a bourbon waiting for me for when Nia's asleep. The bourbon-chai apple pie was delicious, though the only chai I had was a green tea that gave the topping a greenish hue that scared some people away. More for me!
105: Sounds like a good attempt! Seconds on dessert after a big meal is high praise.
Yeah, I still basically hate the part where I ran the dishwasher three times today and cooked a ton of food that I don't even like when I do enough of that on normal days. But Nia's snoring, so the mom gig is officially over for the day.
102: I started with Alanna (Song of the Lioness).
Hosted in-laws &c. for the first time this year as one of them is recovering from heart surgery. One brined turkey, potatoesturnips, parsnips, biscuits, three kinds pie, yacon. Guests brought other sides. Square and bland, but the allergy and intolerance list in my immediate family is now pretty f/n inconvenient and this worked.
It turns out there's corn in some salt. This required extra unbrined turkey halfway through, which fortunately could be handled from fridge supplies.
Two toddlers, adorably energetic. My plan to bring out an inflatable Chesterfield and solemnly ask them not to jump on it went brilliantly -- their constant attempts to sneak back and calibrate what counted as jumping kept them away from all the fragile furniture. And it didn't actually pop! Which would have been educational for us all, I suppose.
Dwarf Lord and I found it surprisingly like our wedding a couple months ago: the event itself isn't precisely worth the hassle, but it's worth it in hindsight. Doubtless there's some better phrasing of this.
Now stain removal and dishes.
110: Wait, the wedding already happened? I knew it had been planned (and that it was a somewhat ambiguous milestone anyway) but congratulations!
Turkey: meh. Gravy: success! Apple tart: meh. Pumpkin pie: success! Wine: success! Bourbon: sleepy!
I'm so jealous of all these items. I made peas, brussels sprouts, broccoli, and yams.
Happy Thanksgiving! It turns out that when you do basically all the cooking, you can contrive to make almost everything at the table be a version you personally like. Now I am very full.
That's not really true for everybody. At least there are plenty of foods where I can't make a version I like.
Oh, me too. And then I don't make 'em!
Felicitations to newlyweds and congratulations to birthday-ers!
Very happy with stuffed quail, potato/celeriac puree and brussel sprouts cooked in cream, was delicious and now sticky date steamed pud to come. Extremely nice not to have a giant poultry carcass to deal with. (Our turkey-leftovers fan is overseas this year.)
If we are all ready to turn our attention to digestion and surely we ought, may I observe that if what Saatchi says of Lawson is true could I please have her liver??? A decade of daily and strenuous drug and alcohol consumption and in her 50s she has the complexion of a putti?! Either he is lying (LIKELY, PERHAPS?!!!) or her liver should be donated to science for the benefit of future generations.
Before you brought up science, I assumed you were considering cannibalism.
I had about the same thought, about Lawson.
111, 113: Thanks! It was the long-distance relationship that did it, I think, after nineteen years.
The last ... three months had my last (please God) and most technically complicated field visit for my diss; moving states to a house with a kitchen renovation that had turned into fifty years of deferred maintenance; family-reunion-type wedding with usual diplomatic puzzles; mother-in-law's open heart surgery. Some other stuff that went okay. I haven't gotten as much writing done as I should have, here or elsewhere, but at least I'm getting back into it.
Gleeful: one of the wedding photos is probably the best picture of my ass ever taken. Haha! Oh, and I even had a second chance to wear the dress; Viennese ball, wore it with brown gloves and a tall mink hat. A years' worth of excellent frivolity packed into a little space.
I *know* that in the last three generations other cranberry sauce has gotten on these napkins, and I wonder how it was gotten out. I may need to set a note to sun them in lemon in six months when there's sun here.
Ugh, chicken liver.
Oh my Jesus, yeah. It actually tastes bad to me in that way that registers are "this is poison and you should spit it out."
I ended up helping cook a lot of things, which was fun, although I've spotted the weakness in this particular group's meal -- it is desserts -- and if we do it again I will make a pie and bring it. Then a 20-year-old asked me for advice and I told her not to construct a neoliberal self. So there was that.
Oh yeah, the desserts. This is correct. There was a store-bought pecan pie that I thought about hitting on but it wasn't opened/on the table and there had been such an awful lot of food it seemed weird to say "hey, could we put this extra thing out?" so I just ate that bread-like cake that was not so great. We should have made something. Desserts I can actually sort of do. Or could at one point. If we go next year I will send off to China for some pecans.
I've been thinking the same about Nigella (no one ever refers to her as Lawson here, I guess that's her dad). Surely she'd look far more raddled if any of that were true? Everyone else does.
That said, I note that all the papers seem to have had the same idea to dig up the most suspiciously shiny-eyed photos of the pair of them they can find. What John Prine called an illegal smile.
All the papers also had the same idea to suck up repellently to wifebeating propagandist dogfucker because he bought so much ad space from them, but then that's another grudge.
There was a store-bought pecan pie that I thought about hitting on
"Hey, baby."
Nigella is a posh word for black onion seeds/kalonji. I think of her as a naan, basically. For the rest, as far as she is at all out of order, I blame the parents myself: naming a girl by sticking an "a" on the end of her father's name just sucks. Saatchi, of course, should be sewn into a sack with a snake, a cockerel and a cat and thrown into the river Tiber.
128: Her late husband John Diamond seemed so much better.
naming a girl by sticking an "a" on the end of her father's name just sucks.
That was basically all Romans: Camilla, Lucia, Livia, Justina, Emilia, Cornelia, Antonia, Claudia, Julia...
There was a store-bought pecan pie that I thought about hitting on
"Hey, baby."
Nice nuts.
Bob is explained somewhere in this Charlie Stross essay.
This we come full-circle. The Trotskyites of old have donned the Armani suits of libertarian and neoliberal think-tank mavens. And the libertarians have begun to search for a purer pre-modern framework with which to defend themselves against the searing vision of the radiant future
102: Circle of Magic or Song of the Lioness.
Dinner was respectable, although there was total rutabaga failure -- I was short on pots, and figured I could boil them for mashing in the microwave. They were not food. They were also not missed, though.
130. Quod erat demonstrandum. The (male) Romans' attitude to women was slightly better than the Greeks', but that's about all that can be said in its favour.
On the Nigella subthread, reverse ferret coup de theatre!
https://twitter.com/soniapurnell/status/406442161723281409
Plant nigella seeds, and the flowers that result have the common name "love in a mist".
"Hot-soft-bread-love-in-a-mist" - if you can get past the exchequery association it isn't too bad of a name. Except perhaps for the onion-y savor of the seeds, but perhaps that just adds the essential twist.
Nigella is a posh word for black onion seeds/kalonji.
I think they get called something else here that's not quite right- black sesame, maybe? I can't quite remember, but it's called some misleading thing in the bulk section at my co-op.
There is a lot of confusion about the names of this spice.
I love that that page contains a survey of the etymologies of various languages' terms for "black".
My Thanksgiving dining experience was greatly impaired by the arrival of a canker sore on my soft palate. I hate you, motherfucking canker sore.
108: It was not taken on an overfull stomach - this was a vegan, although he had had a bit of turkey - but on the other hand, he was also cheating by having the dairy filled pie.
Then a 20-year-old asked me for advice and I told her not to construct a neoliberal self. So there was that.
This made me laugh.
123: Then a 20-year-old asked me for advice and I told her not to construct a neoliberal self
Ha. I'd adore to speak in that way to the 17 and the 19 year old at the gathering I attended. They are, sadly, addicted to (a) their iPhones; (b) flipping their hair and batting their mascara'd eyelashes smirkingly at the olds; (c) upcoming Black Friday sales events. I try to stay out of their way, though last year did feature a conversation in which the 17-year-old revealed that she was considering going pre-med in college, but [rare moment of earnestness] "It's really a lot of work, you know."
It is, it is, I nodded gravely.
We had dinner with some charming 18-22 year olds. Very easy to chat with, quick to laugh.
148: Probably only because they'd forgotten to put on mascara. We all know that's what really turns Kids These Days into monsters.
Nice. I keep waiting for these ones to grow up: figuring maybe college will do something, but the 19-year-old, now a sophomore, is continuing to live at home during college, and at home, the girls seem still to be princesses.
Except the youngest, now 13, who totally has her head on straight. She may wind up an artist, or actress or musician or comedienne or some such: she seems acutely observant, with a rich imagination. I'm gathering she escaped the feedback loop the older two have going between them, whereby they just reinforce one another's hair-flipping and special snow-flakiness.
It's weird, because the parents are utterly down-to-earth.
My cousin's 14-year-old son seems to be very similar to 14-year-old me. We talked about movies a lot.
Unfortunately I don't know how to communicate with him since he doesn't use Facebook.
Seventeen and nineteen are still pretty young. They could turn out okay yet.
My nephew is impossible to converse with. His dinner-table antics seem limited to sitting on laps and pointing at food objects he'd like to be spoon-fed. Kids these days, I tell you what.
My son explained bitcoin to a table of rapt old folks, and then Snapchat.
152: Yeah. It'd be good if they got a bit more outside their accustomed milieu and worldview, I think. They don't seem actually stupid, just pampered and, in my view, ill-mannered. I know that my reaction to them is not as charitable as it could be, but honestly: from what I can tell, their role model is Britney Spears or something. (Except that they're athletic, and do compete and win.) I'm really just not used to people like that, who can't have a conversation if it's not about them.
My son explained bitcoin to a table of rapt old folks
I'd have been one of the rapt old folks at that table! Bitcoin is, like, uh, so it's currency but it's actually not really because it doesn't hold a stable value, and ... of course it doesn't actually exist. So it's a means of trade, through tokens ... which is like regular money anyway, no? insofar as regular money is an I.O.U., so what's the difference? So, uh, so, what's the point of having an alternative 'currency' like this, aside from avoiding the money police? (Etc. etc. goes my grilling of son of Carp.)
Oh yes, my students recently explained snapchat to me.
Ask them how many bitcoins Facebook was recently offering for Snapchat. Award bonus points if they don't use Facebook.
Is the point of snapchat that it stops your snoopy helicopter parents from reading your messages?
159: A lot of my classmates use snapchat for photos that are more frivolous. As in, "I want to send this silly photo of my cat to Sue, but I don't want to clog up her phone with my silly cat photos." Also: drunk photos, because the evidence self-destructs.
159: And anyone else, I think. I guess it's a fight back against invasion of privacy, while still insisting on sending private messages (rather than opting out).
156 -- It's like you were there, parsi. Also explained Silk Road and it's recent troubles.
We concluded that the NSA probably keeps all the snapchat stuff, so it's always available to someone with the right combinations of connections and motives.
(Which conversation was something of a confusion for those old folks not yet rapt, Silk Road being a popular restaurant in town.)
163.1: I try to keep up. I do think you should be proud of your son for being willing and able to explain things to a table of old folks.
Thanksgiving dinner in the year 1 AD (anno dīvortiī) was meant to be had after volunteering en famille to help feed the needy, but the church hosting the event cocked up the schedule and we ended up not being needed. In the ensuing confusion, most of dinner was consumed for lunch before I even got to my ex's, and my Brussels sprouts and latkes became dinner. They were terrific, everyone but me had seconds and not a morsel was left.
Despite all the depressing news (chiefly about a possible/likely additional cut to SNAP benefits, plus people crushing each other at Black Friday sales), there is gossip!
Is Patrick Stewart a pole-leaner? I did not know that pole-leaning was a thing, much less an awful thing.
Apparently he is! Apparently. Still I have a crush on that guy, pole-leaner or not.
166: I realize loaves & fishes is a lot to live up to, but it sounds like you did your part to make the day memorable and satisfying!
"drunk photos, because the evidence self-destructs."
Ok, I never got this- there's a feature on all phones to take a screenshot so if you send something embarrassing people can still capture it outside of Snapchat. Or if the app disables that feature you can still take a picture of the phone with another phone which lowers quality but still keeps the embarrassment around for posterity. I'd use the term analog hole but that fruit is too low.
Or maybe you just trust the people you're chatting with at the moment you're chatting and the idea is that when you break up later the evidence is gone.
169: The Snapchat app sends a message back to the sender if the recipient takes a screenshot. I also thought of the analog-hole problem you point out, but the classmate who was explaining it to me said, "Yeah, I guess, but the person would have to have the second camera ready and waiting, and that's just unlikely."
167.2 his explanatory tweet seems fair enough.
154. Seems to me Bitcoin will work fine till somebody with serious money decides to take the piss. See under John Law and the Mississippi Company.
I'd never heard of Snapchat before. But actually I think it's cool that people now use James Bond-y gadgets to share their drunk cat pictures.
Then a 20-year-old asked me for advice and I told her not to construct a neoliberal self.
This is so great.
159: First of all, Snoopy had a biplane, and secondly, I don't think he had any kids.
None that he acknowledged or paid support on.
Food-related: Mother Jones reviews Ann Romney's cookbook.
Highlights include
Most of the other recipes are extremely simple, such as "Boiled New Potatoes," a dish whose instructions take up about one line: "Boil until fork tender, about 30 minutes. Season with butter and salt."
On Mitt's Meatloaf Cakes
"Horrifying on the first bite," reported Mother Jones staffer Patrick Caldwell. "But once I was mentally prepared, it was delicious."
And George's favorite, Pistachio Pudding Salad
"Salad" really isn't the right word for George's favorite. Along with the pudding mix, the recipe calls for a can of crushed pineapple, a can of mandarin oranges, grapes, coconut, a cup of mini-marshmallows and an eight-ounce tub of Cool Whip. As I mixed all these ingredients, my children stood by and watched in horror as I added the pistachio pudding mix and the whole vat turned a ghastly, unnatural shade of green.
on topic for Thanksgivukkah: why does Hanukkah music in general suck so much?
Is it a form of Central European folk music and thus a typical member of its class.
Did everyone get to see the Katey Red dreidel song version? It wasn't the best bounce track I've ever heard, but the video was funny.
178: Because no one actually cares about Hanukkah.
GEORGE BUSH DOESN'T CARE ABOUT HANUKKAH.
<insert Obama not as connected as the Jews follow on joke here>
176.4: where I come from (Michigan) we called that "ambrosia" and you didn't put pudding in it. Or Cool Whip for that matter--we actually used whipped cream. But yes to the canned fruit. As a child I loved it. But I liked jello with frozen raspberries in it too. I had bad taste.
186: we had Thanksgiving dinner with friends, one of whom is from the Midwest. She served a lime jello dish made with canned pineapple chunks (I'm nearly certain that's what they were), fruit cocktail (probably -- at least I think those were canned grapes), some chopped nuts that might have been pistachios (maybe?), and cream cheese (so she said). It tasted like mostly forgotten chapters of my childhood.
Mmmm, canned fruit cocktail. Although I have my doubts about the cream cheese. And I never liked the ones with mayonnaise added to make the jello opaque.
I was skeptical, too, but the cream cheese made it all the more delicious.
Has to be canned pineapple, fresh pineapple will eat your jello.
186.1: One of my friends (from Tennessee) actually made ambrosia for Thanksgiving. It wasn't *good*, exactly, but I happily ate a bunch of it.
|| There aren't any Chanticleers in the flock, are there? Coastal Carolina won their playoff game today, and gets to come here to play the Griz next Saturday. Forecast high on game day is 18F -- if they come a day early, it'll be 14F -- although for noon kick-off it'll be closer to 10F, I'd think. Only 20% chance of snow, so it'll probably just be windy and cold in a very full very loud stadium. The winner gets to go to Fargo the next weekend and to face get beaten by the defending champs. |>
The only Chanticleer I know is the French restaurant on Nantucket.
The only Chanticleer I know is the all-male vocal ensemble. What?
195: Right, they're playing the Griz next Saturday. They'll sing the halftime show if any of them are left standing.
The only Chanticleer I know is Howie Chanticleer, down at the VFW. Hell of a bartender, but don't get him started on pre-WWI German colonial postage stamps or you'll be there all day.
186, 187: Those are two totally different things. Heavenly Hash is the type with Cool Whip or whipped cream, is very likely to be pink, and has a smooth mouth-feel. The other stuff is just "salad" and is green, with pineapple, cottage cheese and some kind of chopped nut. It is more crunchy and not as sweet.
I should really remember to be more grateful to my parents. Given where I grew up, that I don't know what you are talking about must have taken dedicated effort.
I thought Heavenly Hash was a kind of ice cream! Along the general lines of Rocky Road. Is the ice cream named after the jellied thing, or vice versa, or is it convergent evolution?
200: Eh, probably just the inevitable miscommunications in a country that spans a continent.
199: Well, as I've mentioned before, my grandmother's repertoire was a few Danish holiday dishes and then a whole lot of post-war Good Housekeeping-type recipes. All done as cheaply as possible of course, because lived through the Depression. (Actually, not just "lived through" but "was a professional cook during")
I dodged most traditional Midwestern horrors, but my mother did routinely serve carrot salad (carrots, raisins, mayonnaise) and a truncated Waldorf salad (apples, celery, raisins, mayo) on a leaf of Iceburg lettuce. I consider it a good trade for never having Jello based "salads" or tuna noodle casserole.
It's ok Moby, I'll try to explain a bit more. Many universities have football teams, made up of "students," and the teams have nicknames. When Coastal Carolina University wanted a nickname for their team, they couldn't be the Gamecocks because that was already taken, so they went with Chanticleer, the gamest cock around. It's no wonder your grandmother didn't tell you about this . . .
Waldorf salad is delicious. And can't really be construed as "Midwestern", can it?
204: I am not mature enough to know about that yet.
Nothing actually wrong with a carrot salad either, although I'd prefer to dress it with a vinaigrette.
208. Why does the scary chicken wear a colour named after a duck?
209.2: to get to the other side.
Because it's stapled to the chicken.
Nothing actually wrong with a carrot salad either, although I'd prefer to dress it with a vinaigrette.
Yes. I've made it with a citrus and cumin dressing and thought it was good. Mayonnaise? Mais non.
My first and only encounter with Waldorf salad is an Ugly American story:
While studying in Chile, I took a short trip to Argentina and by coincidence there was another American student there. I knew him from the university but not terribly well. So, he invited me to join him for dinner at a pretty swanky restaurant, and I immediately got the impression he was being a bit flashy with his money (e.g., ordering expensive wines in a very non-chalant way, so non-chalant in fact that it looks like you're actually trying), which I thought was pretty dickish. But the kicker was: he asked if the restaurant could do a Waldorf salad, even though it wasn't on the menu. The waiter went back and talked to the chef, who said he could make the salad. Then the salad came out and my dining companion said, "No, this is not a proper Waldorf salad" and had the waiter bring the chef out to the table so he could explain how to make a proper Waldorf salad. Oh dear god, so awkward, so mortifying, Christ, what an asshole.
"I'm sorry, we're fresh out of waldorfs."
I love tuna casserole with the fiery conviction of the truly righteous. That my family despises it means A) I only get to make it for lunch on weekends and B) more for me when I do get to make it.
I love tuna casserole with the fiery conviction of the truly righteous.
My brother.
had the waiter bring the chef out to the table so he could explain how to make a proper Waldorf salad
The fuck? I've not seen anything like that except in a movie. Even if I ate something that made me vomit, I think I'd call the next day instead of that.
I've never eaten tuna casserole. I've eaten plenty of tuna salad sandwiches, but I'm really lazy about making sandwiches so the "salad" is only tuna and mayo.
The best kind of tuna casserole is the type with potato chips mixed in and cheese on top. Otherwise you've just got this pea-heavy gelatinous goop.
The fuck? I've not seen anything like that except in a movie.
It actually got even worse. After the salad thing, I told my dinner companion he was being a dick and rude and an unreasonable customer, he called the waiter back over and asked whether anything he had done was rude. And of course the waiter was all, "No, not at all, sir. Of course not," because what the fuck else was he gonna say, as I pointed out. And my dining companion accused me of being self-righteous just because I had waited tables and he hadn't, and he accused me of thinking I was more "down with the gente" than he, and then to prove his own cred, he called the waiter back over and asked what time he got off work and gave him a cell phone number to call and meet us for a drink. Which to my surprise the waiter totally did, and oh my god, it was totally surreal and awkward and I felt like a total shit for hanging out with this guy.
Maybe you were on a Chilean TV hidden-camera show.
"No, this is not a proper Waldorf salad" and had the waiter bring the chef out to the table so he could explain how to make a proper Waldorf salad
Hmmm...needs more spit.
Even if I ate something that made me vomit, I think I'd call the next day instead of that.
I'll return stuff that is actually inedible in any restaurant and in swanky ones I might for things that are badly fucked up.
I figure if it tasted good enough to eat, I'm getting the entertainment value of the meal and am only missing the nutritional value.
Lesson: if you want to get off with a waiter in Chile, ask for a waldorf salad. It's some kind of secret signal.
226 May be the answer. In Stanley's position I'd have muttered something about needing to piss and fucked off never to be seen again.
Or maybe you just have to be rude and patronising to the chef, and this will win the waiter's heart (since the chef spends most of his time being rude and patronising to the waiters, he'll be like "my hero!")
