Oh, sure, make me step on this post. Enjoy the holiday, you jerkface horndog.
You too, Gayatollah. They also serve who open threads.
I didn't ask her out either, of course, but then she was a good ten
I get intimidated by anything above about a fair-to-middling seven, myself, so I'm with you.
I think I've been seated next to an attractive interesting person only once. She was some kind of industrial engineer who worked on salt manufacturing, and she pretended to be vaguely interested in analytic philosophy. Alhumdulillah.
So, it was the ten-hood that stopped you? She hasn't saved you from any Iranian lawyers yet, you know?
Ogged, you're effectively where I want you to be. Now you just have to jettison all the lame excuses and openly affirm your autonomous state.
I'm sure that you'll be pleased to know that I've entered you onto the rolls of my unrelationship group in the office of Vice President. (The other Vice Presidents are Teo, w-lfs-n, and AWB).
Ironically, "being someone's vice president" is D.C. thieves' cant for a relationship.
she was a good ten, maybe fifteen years older than I am
So?
7: AWB doesn't deserve that, yet. Give her a full year.
Emerson is hasty, like the Devil with a virtuous soul.
Aren't you lot meant to be peeling potatos instead of pratting around on the Internets? Have a nice day!
Emerson is hasty, like the Devil with a virtuous soul.
Ogged = Tomlinson?
Every Vice President is authorized to call himself "Cheney". AWB can call herself "Lynn" if she wishes, and write homoerotic lesbian cowboy novels.
So?
Think of teh Iranian grandchildren, mano.
Everyone's free to write homoerotic lesbian cowboy novels.
12: I made my butternut squash and potato casserole yesterday, as well as some pralines and a bourbon-cherry-caramel-apple pie. How I will carry this all to the house in Queens where I'm having Thanksgiving, I have no idea.
14: My lesbian cowboy novels are going to kick ass. Did I ever tell you guys about the time I was hired to write a lesbian porno? Long story short: I quit because the director was "too political."
The other VPs are not allowed to, at cost of expulsion. But AWB has such a talent!
About the only time I can recall sitting on a plane with a very good-looking woman next to me who was also pretty unequivocally and persistently trying to chat me up, my wife was in the seat to my right, trying to get some sleep.
OFE, In my family we never ate potatoes on Thanksgiving, but we always had squash (vegetable marrows) and (sweet) corn, because those were foods that the Pilgrims ate. I believe that they thought that potatoes were poisonous.
Little known fact: the turkey was already a common holiday meal in England before 1620. It came to England via Spain.
Zomg I'm so using "vegetable marrows" at dinner today.
I would always prefer to have a goose, as my British forefathers enjoyed. Maybe someday I can realize this dream.
20: My first instinct is "set up the threesome!", but it seems like it wouldn't be hard for you to say "my wife and I..." nod to sleeping wife "...can't wait to get to $DESTINATION" in that circumstance.
you should send this in to the "Modern Love" column. Although I suppose in a sense you basically have done.
AWB, I didn't want OneFatEnglishman to think that I was talking about the orange drink.
Ah, that's a Britishism I was somehow unfamiliar with. I welcome it into my home.
Or any other 'delicious' flavour.
Ogged - you'd hate that sort of free-spiritedness after a while. Stick with the neuroses you know.
21: It always puts me in mind of Hercule Poirot and his dream to retire to the country to grow "the vegetable marrows."
My wife refers to squash as stávičku. I on the other hand stick to the traditional scottish 'juice'.
I'm referring to the drink here, not the minging vegetable.
Does "vegetable marrow" encompass both summer (thin-skinned) and winter (hard rind) squash, i.e. both zucchini and zucca?
I prefer to make a casserole of mangold-wurzels.
25: but with that statement you haven't really properly escaped. You could still find yourself involved in unexpected exploits.
re: 32
In English English marrow refers to one specific vegetable rather than the family in general.
i.e. http://seeds.thompson-morgan.com/pix/m/seeds/6/633.jpg
the one that's like a courgette only bigger.
Ogged - you'd hate that sort of free-spiritedness after a while. Stick with the neuroses you know.
So, so wrong. You want destructive neurotic interference, not constructive neurotic interference.
35: Is there no family term in British English for what Americans call "winter squash"? (Butternut, turban, spaghetti, acorn, carnival, etc.)
My limited understanding of Vegetable Marrows and squash. Whatever, it sounds great, unlike the orange drink, which is unspeakable and exacerbates ADHD in kids.
AWB, You're taking all that (get a taxi, woman, you've just got a new job)? Are you the only cook, or how many thousands are you feeding?
Have a great time all.
I would always prefer to have a goose
Goose is overrated by romantic Americans.
s there no family term in British English for what Americans call "winter squash"? (Butternut, turban, spaghetti, acorn, carnival, etc.)
"Foreign food."
That is, Vegetable Marrow is a specific type of squash, like an overgrown zucchini/courgette. And when I say overgrown...
re: 37
They call them 'squash'. Personally, since I pretty much abominate the lot of 'em [with the exception of marrows and courgettes] it's not really an issue.
These are the folks I have to feed. The hosts are making a lot of food, and a few others are bringing some, but I figure if I bring a lot I don't have to buy booze. (The new job is a little supplementary income to keep me in rent, unfortunately.) It's only one transfer, so I think I can do it okay.
Both pictures of vegetable marrows make me think it's probably sort of gross. It does not look tasty. At least courgettes have a nice firm interior (that should be salted and grated and made into fritattas).
35: Looks like zucchini to me. During the zucchini season you have to hide to avoid gift zucchinis. Lowlifes and bounders will try to repay you in zucchini for all the nice tasty foods you gave them during the year. They're not even very good for catapulting because they're too long in relation to their thickness.
44: My parents were the lowlifes who gave away zucchini, until they started growing hot peppers instead. They still have to give a bunch away, but who'd turn down a nice big handful of frying peppers and jalapeños?
Marrow tastes of water. It's not actively unpleasant, but that's about it (sorry, ttaM). You hollow them out, stuff and roast them, so they can be OK if the stuffing and gravy is good. But I wouldn't cross the ocean to eat them. Sounds like you have a good party.
"Sort of" gross does it no justice. The marrow is the quintessence, the very marrow, of grossissity.
I quite like stuffed marrow. My parents used to stuff them with curried mushroom, which was nice.
I can't say I cook them regularly, though. And the other kinds of squash are bogging.
Zucchini is a completely abstract, generic food, like tofu. "Marrow" is a misnomer, because actual marrow is tasty and rich.
45: AWB, had I known that I never would have ridiculed you the way I did. In zucchini-growing families the children suffer terribly.
Zucchini would be a great deal more popular if it went back to wandering around Tokugawa-era Japan fighting gangsters and giving massages.
Sounds like your parents made the best of it, ttaM. I once had roasted marrow, stuffed with chopped nuts and onions and not much else, for Christmas. This was not a good idea (nor mine, I should add).
49: The first time I had a really good zucchini was like the first time I had a really good tomato; it didn't seem like the same food. Plus, they have a lot more flavor if you grate, salt, and drain them before using the flesh in pasta or eggs or whatever. They can be really tasty.
Fried zucchini I haven't had since I was a kid. Delicious. But my mom usually made it sort of mushily sauteed, the way they serve it in cafeterias. Truly disgusting flavorless mush.
My family had a goose once. I always try to get duck at restaurants and the goose tasted more like duck than like turkey.
"Cornish game hen", however, = chicken. Why bother.
44, 45: Oh, I didn't think of this when we had the thread of child-appropriate jokes.
Q. How do you know someone has no friends?
A. You see him in the supermarket buying zucchini.
In other news, I arrived at my father's house to find that I was expected to make pumpkin pie using a canned "pumpkin pie mix." Can we please agree that this is an abomination, and that if one must eat pumpkin pie, it ought not to include corn syrup?
I endorse 43b and 53. It took me a long time to learn that I could enjoy zucchini, and marrow looks unappealing. Hating on winter squash, though, is simply misguided. What's not to like?
I never felt the same way about zucchinis after Goodbye Columbus. Or was that a carrot? A cucumber?
"Cornish game hens" are smaller, younger, and plumper, IIRC.
Skin-on duck is by far the best poultry.
Duck is pretty nice, yeah.
Spatchcocked poussins, just grilled for about half an hour are pretty great too. Also, pheasant, but I have about a 50% record with that -- half the time it's delicious, the other half ... not.
For my casserole, I roasted a huge butternut squash and food-milled it with two potatoes, garlic fried in butter, milk, parsley, Italian pepper-cheese, and pecorino romano, and topped it with croutons made with multi-grain bread, pecans, olive oil, and kosher salt. Mmmmm... I hope it is loved, because food-milling all that was kind of a bitch.
55: Agreed. In fact, nothing should include corn syrup.
60: Sounds wonderful. Breaking out the food mill always sounds like a good idea until you're about 1/3 of the way through.
60. If it isn't loved, mail it here. It will be.
re: 56
It's partly a texture thing. I've tried various things made from squash and never liked them. I don't like pumpkin either.
I'm quite catholic in my vegetable/plant eating tastes. Squash-type veggies and fava beans are the only things I'm aware of actively disliking.
60: mmmm, verily. If it is not loved, your diners are stark raving mad.
I was asked to bring some kind of pasta dish (which always seems a little dissonant for Thanksgiving to me, but whatever), so I made baked rombi with garlic, creme fraiche and gruyere, layered with caramelized onions and roasted red peppers, and topped with a thick layer of chopped pistachios. The last part may sound weird, but the flavors go very well, and it's incidentally gorgeous. Soon I'm going to make some roasted root vegetables (parsnips, carrots, celeraic, olive oil, salt and pepper and garlic added at the end). Pumpkin pie is sitting in the cupboard already.
65: Gah, that rombi sounds delicious. And I am insane about celeriac. That's what I took to TDay last year, a celeriac and potato casserole somewhat similar to my squash and potato one--lots of garlic and cheese.
"Casserole" is not the most appetizing word. The category needs a new name.
67. I'm afraid we just call them "bakes", as in "cheese and celeriac bake". We are not a romantic people, culinarily. Or any other way, really.
I know. Casserole makes me think of nasty upper-plains food made out of frozen potato chunks and mayonnaise. Or worse: tuna. Ick. But how does one get across the concept of a cake-pan full of mixed up vegetabular mass with lots of cheese and croutons?
When I was growing up, my mom always made a dish for TDay that was basically mashed potatoes covered in grated cheese and croutons, baked. As little kids, we dubbed it "crustatoes." All my casseroles are roughly based on the concept of crustatoes. Yum.
Ogged = Tomlinson?
The one who gave up the ghost one night in something square? He wasn't virtuous.
a bourbon-cherry-caramel-apple pie
Intriguing!
All of the recipes sound quite delicious [although not really to my taste] but to people not get tired of all the cream and cheese and baked stuff?
71: I think it's just part of the weird character of TDay food that it must be creamy and heavy, by law. I don't eat that kind of stuff on any other day of the year, so it's nice to do it once.
reality is distracting
e-bahn mi, eating prohibited :)
sorry, the main dish is sure turkey
Happy Thanksgiving
Asking for a plateful of "crusty toes" seems like it could be made more mellifluous, AWB.
67: Let's do what English habitually does: steal from another language. In this case, German, which yields "Auflauf." Sounds funny, plus internal rhyme; what's not to like?
My mum made something like crustatoes, too. Only it had a layer of Heinz baked beans underneath the mashed potatoes. No croutons, but lots of grated cheese.
For some reason, the aural hallucination I just had of nattarGcM saying "crustatoes" made me giggle.
I think it's just part of the weird character of TDay food that it must be creamy and heavy, by law. I don't eat that kind of stuff on any other day of the year, so it's nice to do it once.
Ditto. I do definitely like also to have foods that work to cut the heaviness -- an enormous salad is nice, as are other green things (ideally vinegary rather than creamy). I would have made my favorite brussels sprouts, for example, but they were vetoed. I think there will be salad, at least.
My mom used to make goat stew for thanksgiving, and I thought it was tres lame. That is, until I tried roasted turkey for the first time. I remember thinking that it tasted nothing like it looks it ought to taste like. Now I really want goat stew. All the time.
When I was a kid, we had Xmas dinner at my grandparents' ranch in Colorado. The day before, my dad and uncle shot a few geese, and brought them in for Xmas dinner. My grandma was not amused, and made them pluck etc.
They were pretty good, though, as I recall. At 40 years remove . . .
The word you're looking for is "gratin."
My casseroles were all called "glop", ut there was an implied value judgment.
Costa Rica is fabulous. Our friends moved down there and constantly try to convince us to do the same.
One bad things about divorce: you cannot just move the kids where you want to move them.
Ogged, you are an idiot. Ask a girl out. Any girl. Then, ask another girl out. Any girl. Carpe Diem. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.
Don't listen to Will, Ogged. He won't be able to prey on you if you don't get married.
"Instead of getting married, you should just figure out who you hate most in the world, and then give them half your property". But the lawyer gets a chunk too.
I am just as happy if he just lives with a girl. That causes much more difficulty than marriage when they split up.
How about if he just pays you money not to do anything?
Cranberry wine: surprisingly delicious.
other green things (ideally vinegary rather than creamy)
Aha, I thought I posted this yummy green-beans-with-vinegar recipe here before.
The Recipes of Unfogged Potluck Meetup: coming soon to a city nowhere near me?
55: I was expected to make pumpkin pie using a canned "pumpkin pie mix." Can we please agree that this is an abomination
This has been discussed. At the time, I was quite surprised that there was not an overwhelming consensus in favor of fresh pumpkin.
Even the Tartine cookbook, as I learned last night, doesn't come down on the side of fresh pumpkin. Shocking! Seems they had trouble doing it on a large scale for the bakery.
Why that means it isn't preferable for the home cook, or for those who can get their logistics straight, was not explained.
My guess is that the payoff per unit of effort is small. I can see getting neutral processed pumpkin and spicing it yourself.
Soon I will be off to my own Thanksgiving obbligato, and all y'all will be left to your own devices. It promises to be more fun than expected, because one inlaw is boycotting for mental reasons of her own.
Some things are much worse when mass produced. Others, e.g., ketchup, are much better. Pumpkin not being the sort of thing nature intended you put in a dessert pie, I can see how a processed form might be just the thing.
Meanwhile, my bacon sprouts are in the oven.
Maybe a distinction can be made between some sort of relatively unadulterated preprocessed pumpkin and the sort that comes along with corn syrup in these "mixes" of which Mrs. Adams speaks. Just a guess.
My extended family, which I am on the way out the door to see, has always had the sort of Thanksgiving meals where each person or family unit brings a dish. I remember several car rides home from these dinners over the years where my mom has asked, "Did you taste X's pumpkin pie? Canned pumpkin."
"Instead of getting married, you should just figure out who you hate most in the world, and then give them half your property".
For some reason, I read this as:
"Instead of getting married, you should just figure out who you hate most in the world, and then give them half your puppetry".
Brilliant!
Just finished making the gratin de courge, salade de haricots verts, and gateau aux pommes -- soon off to my brother's. Mangez-bien, mes petites grenouilles!
Hating on winter squash, though, is simply misguided. What's not to like?
The flavor? I've never liked the taste of any winter squash, and that goes double for pumpkin pie. Nasty, revolting stuff.
If you don't like the taste of winter squash, you don't. I had a stunning butternut squash soup with cornbread yesterday, but if that's revolting, okay.
The hating on zucchini mystifies me. It's low-class? Go figure. No one knows how to cook it properly? Unknown. I consider it a staple, and am happy to eat it raw.
Maybe a distinction can be made between some sort of relatively unadulterated preprocessed pumpkin and the sort that comes along with corn syrup in these "mixes" of which Mrs. Adams speaks. Just a guess.
Libby's makes both a canned pumpkin (nothin' but pumpkin) and a pumpkin pie mix. I consider the former to be relatively innocuous, especially since IME fresh pumpkin can be quite varible in its wateryness and (lack of) taste. When fresh pumpkin is good, it's delicious. When it's not, it's unpleasant. And who wants to go through the hassle of preparing it if it's not going to be good?*
*I am fully prepared to believe that there are tips for choosing a decent pumpkin, similar to those for pineapple or cantaloupe, of which I am ignorant.
However: Roasted pumpkin seeds are the food of the gods.
Pumpkin seed oil must be a close second.
The secret to pumpkin pie is to make it with butternut squash instead.
Pumpkin in a pie is pumpkin, roasted or boiled, and mashed. That's one of the things that can translate perfectly well into a can, people.
Goose is overrated by romantic Americans.
Not true! The secret to goose is to soak it in saline and scald the skin. Crispy goose skin is seriously one of the most delicious foods in the entire universe.
Armsmasher made a pretty kickass goose last year.
1689 lb. pumpkin
I had the privilege of seeing this fine specimen, grown right here in Rhode Island, at the Topsfield Fair earlier this fall. It was majestic. My understanding is that it was recently carved at Twin River casino by a master pumpkin carver.
109: The problem here is that the result is not pumpkin pie but squash pie. Similar, but not the same. We used to serve both, but now stick to pumpkin, which, when properly made from canned pumpkin (100% pumpkin and not a mix), is perfectly fine, and as creamy as one can wish.
What are the odds that three weeks from now we're back to discussing the lawyer lady?
Happy Thanksgiving y'all.
My wife refers to squash as stávičku. I on the other hand stick to the traditional scottish 'juice'.
"'juice'" s/b "Irn Bru".
