First discovery of the day- smoked salmon is not the same as lox, and the former does not necessarily make a good appetizer with capers and horseradish. I wondered it was cheaper.
Mmmm. Smoked salmon.
"I love smoking sand and dried-up fish. Those are some of the best smokes I've ever had!"
There is a huge, beautiful, bright blue jay outside my window right now. I am making two pots of beans for Tday. In the South, beans are standard.
I"m actually only here on the computer to put "Alice's Restaurant" onto my iPhone for the edification of the entire family.
Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.
_______
Brined turkey, giblet gravy, veggie bread stuffing, spicy andouille cornbread stuffing, roasted parsnips with orange zest, LeSeur peas, and a salad with blue cheese and pomegranates. Apple pie, cranberry velvet pie.
"Arrested Development" marathon on G4. Very traditional (and snowy) here at the ancestral homestead.
In the South, beans are standard.
Interesting. I have not encountered this particular tradition. Where in the South? What kind of beans?
You're in Texas, M/lls. AWB was talking about the South.
Pretty rainy here. The family said they'd be here around 11; no sign of them yet.
8: Alabama, limas. I'm making a pot of chestnut limas (cooked in beer with apples) and also a pot of vaquero and yellow-eye beans with chipotle, caramelized onion, and tomato.
I'm making bread. I also have a can of pumpkin. And some chicken breasts. It's going to be a sort of diminished Thanksgiving over here.
Starting to clear up a bit. Still no family.
And some chicken breasts
But a lovely smile.
Sformata di ricotta, salat des haricots verts, individual caramelized apple tarts. Mashed tatties, bashed neeps, etc.
On cleaning out the fridge yesterday, I discovered that the duck fat I was hoping to use for the potatoes had gone rancid. Alas. On the plus side, clean, clean fridge. Sometimes I just peek in to appreciate its cleanliness.
Turkey (brined), roasted potatoes, grilled asparagus, Brussels sprouts in some manner yet to be determined, sage sausage stuffing (with pecans and dried cranberries, maybe?), mesclun salad with fennel. Relatives bringing pie, maybe also ghastly cranberry sauce-type thing.
We're having a turkey, a ham, a terrine, beets, an apple tart, a lemon pie, some other kind of dessert, brussels sprouts, stuffing, salad, and a bunch of other shit I can't remember or never knew about. I'm not organizing it.
"stuffing" is descriptively inadequate w-lfs-n
I'm not making it. I don't know what it will be.
Andenhirse salad for lunch; bird in oven for 5:30 pm.
Quaere: Daughter announced ambition to get MFA, teach creative writing. Do I need to organize an intervention?
Though it's better than if she had announced her intention to get an MFA and support herself by writing.
Does she have real-world job ezsperience? I believe that nobody should go to grad school without having a least a couple of years of the 9-5. And an MFA = crippling debt.
We'll see how long the ambition lasts -- but yes, there will be time off between undergrad and grad, and fear of debt is already activated.
I believe that nobody should go to grad school without having a least a couple of years of the 9-5.
For all disciplines?
I believe that nobody should go to grad school without having a least a couple of years of the 9-5.
Agreed. I'm very glad I didn't go straight out of undergrad.
For all disciplines?
I'd say so, yes. At least I can't think of any for which it would be different.
Which is not to say that going straight to grad school doesn't work for some people. But as a general rule I'd discourage it.
I think it's more variable with the individual. Remember, (Teo), you were very sure leaving undergrad that you didn't want to go straight into grad school at that point.
25: I would say yes. Grad students are shit upon in a way that is hard for someone who hasn't worked for a living to understand. Plus people who've never made their own money are way more gullible.
Remember, (Teo), you were very sure leaving undergrad that you didn't want to go straight into grad school at that point.
That's true, but I think I would turn it around and say that if someone is really sure they want to go to grad school straight out of undergrad they'll probably do fine. If there's any doubt at all, though, I think it's a bad idea and they should work for a while first.
But of course my experience in this matter is extremely limited and other people's experiences and opinions will vary.
Appetizers: shrimp cocktail, baked brie, smoked salmon, 3 cheeses (including one homemade), speck, baguette and sourdough bread.
Beers: Costco "Best of Belgium" pack- hoegaarten, stella artois, leffe.
Wines: Merlot, Cabernet, Alsacian reisling.
Meal: Brined crisp-skin turkey, mashed sweet potatoes, stuffing, arugula salad with crumbled bacon, walnuts, and apples, butternut squash soup, homemade no-knead bread, vegetable dish TBD (guests bringing later)
Dessert: chocolate mousse, key lime pie, TBD.
Pleasant surprise: was going to brush turkey with butter, but when I found out that person who brought salad would be cooking the bacon for it here, I switched to bacon fat.
(My family's still not here. Looks like they didn't leave at 8.)
I had a 5 year gap. After spending 7 as an undergrad. I'd say all but the most self-aware and determined ought to take time off.
I don't actually think my path was problem-free, either. I just worry that if I'd delayed grad school that I'd have stayed in a dead-end relationship and can't think of what I might have done that would have helped me at that point. And grad school did seem to help with some of the crap that was plaguing me as an undergrad.
I'd say all but the most self-aware and determined ought to take time off.
I'd agree with that.
I ended up deciding in my 4th year of college to go to grad school, and staying on for a 5th year to get more classes before applying. So during my 4th year I was applying for jobs, and they all looked soul-destroyingly awful. And I didn't have the courage to just strike out in a new town without a job.
Guess who fucked up the beets? Me.
I spent 16! years as an undergrad and have spent 28! years deciding not to gop to grad school.
The "!"s are not mathematical signs.
I seemed pretty damned determined to go to grad school, and I was not really equipped to treat it as a job-apprenticeship, as Serious Business.
BIL brought a mousse that didn't set. Can it be saved by further extensive whipping?
I just made a pecan pie. Always pre-bake the crust so it doesn't get soggy from the filling.
20: tell her to swap that F for a B and she'll be all right.
Quaere: Daughter announced ambition to get MFA, teach creative writing. Do I need to organize an intervention?
Yes. Or an abduction. Whatever it takes.
I'm [gasp] going out to a restaurant with Canadians, who don't have the proper respect for this holiday, I find. I expect it'll be nice, though. Happy Thanksgiving, all!
Eating lateish. Casserole roasted chicken with tarragon and brown tarragon gravy. Mashed roasted potatoes (they go in with the chicken), buttered squash, some fresh rolls, apple pie, deviled eggs and some other stuff I forgot. Pretty plain, but turkey-free.
max
['Yay!']
Two meals here, what with the vegetarian stepson. He's getting sole, the rest are getting turkey [dry salted; easier than brine, same results.] My son, the chef, is doing the sole - something with orange and sage. Three variations on stuffing: one vegetarian, one with celery in it and one without, MSTC, for reasons unknown, is hating on teh celery. Various mashed root thingies, roasted cauliflower, fresh peas, cranberries w/orange, various pre-dinner munchies mostly involving cheese being brought by guests, stuffed mushrooms w/veggie sausage, pumpkin and apple pies. The kittens will be allowed downstairs after dinner and treated to turkey. Knowing them, they'll probably turn up their noses at it and try for the pie. At least one of them has expressed a desire for pumpkin, having spent a while licking some off my t-shirt when I took a break from baking.
I bought pounds and pounds of cranberries at Costco, where they are cheap! and am canning them/freezing them, because the Biophysicist regards cranberries as a necessary food group.
I have a friend who is deathly allergic to celery. I've sketched out a murder mystery in which a sinister Peter Lorre type darts furtively into the kitchen, carrying a celery stalk and cackling fiendishly. The camera would zoom in on the celery while sinister music played.
Mumbai Attack Is Obama's First International Challenge
Will Obama meet this challenge successfully? Or is this Day One of a failed presidency? Events will answer these questions.
We're having Thanksgiving on Saturday because of scheduling and transportation questions.
Whipped the mousse but failed to thicken. Instead baked it and turned it into a soufflé that looks ok, will be eaten after a trip to the zoo now.
Went to see Alice's Restaurant movie in Ann Arbor with another parent of the age of the movie and with our kids. Very bizarre. Other parent and I totally into it while our kids were somewhat baffled.
I'm sitting on my ass while my husband does all the work. I may shower later and will hopefully go to the store to get some soy milk and cream for to make a banana cream pie.
Our family does Thanksgiving on Friday so far-flung family can travel more conveniently--and this year we've made them all come to us. I'm hoping next year to convince the family to try the bacon turkey method, but it seems doubtful. For now, I have a turkey to brine.
Happy Thanksgiving, all!
Iraq just passed the sofa agreement. It's really encouraging that their war-torn country can finally peacefully agree about how to furnish its living room.
From small beginnings......
Packerman graphically made the same "joke" at FDL. Great minds.....
I'm Silver Spring, MD, at my sister and BIL's place. The parents came out from Mpls, too, so it's the 5 of us here. Thus, a much smaller Thanksgiving (I hate it when people call it "Turkey Day") than the usual 40+ attendees affair. I believe this, my 28th, is only the 2nd Thanksgiving I've spent outside the Twin Cities.
I ran 6 mi through Rock Creek Park this morning. Wikipedia confirms my vague recollection of RCP being the location where Chandra Levy's remains were found. Remember Chandra Levy? Gary Condit? How that was the big story on 9/10/01? 9/11 really did change everything.
Lots of health care shop talk here with 3 MDs in the room. Fortunately, the turkey is almost ready. The stuffing is the best part, IMO.
I went to friends', where there was a turkey, garlick & red pepper green beans, mashed potatoes, gravy, sage stuffing, wine, cider and pecan bars & pecan pie. We talked pets and videogames and just a touch of politics but not too much. There was easily enough food for twice as many people and we ate with gusto but not so much that any of us were uncomfortable. We had coffee and played with dogs. It was ridiculously nice. Now I'm going to play a videogame for a while, or possibly just go for a drive with the iPod.
We arrived for hors d'oeuvres at my wing-nut uncle's at 2, sat down to dinner around 3:40 and left at 7:20.
My sister's annoying and socially inept boyfriend was there. Two of my uncle's girlfriend's kids were there. One works as a carpenter (union) and generally talked about skiing and going drinking with his buddies.
My cousin was there, and he's a real liberal, but he and his father did not fight about politics too much. His girlfriend who's basically nice did make an awful comment about the Metco kids she saw on the T going to Brookline. At least, she acknowledged that this might make her a racist.
Also, my sister and her boyfriend mentioned that they're going down to the Cape to P-town. Everyone said that they didn't really like it there.
23 year-old carpenter guy said that he used to go down and liked to watch from the ferry. So wing nut uncle asked whether he saw any fairies on the ferry. I COULD NOT BELIEVE IT.
25 or so people at my in-laws (Roberta's one of seven kids, most of whom have kids of their own), making for much wine-soaked fun. Just got home and the kids are asleep. Hooray for quiet!
I had a really nice thanksgiving. Just me and my brother (the parents didn't want to fork out for a flight to SF); we each made a dish: I made risotto, he made sweet potato souffle. Neither of us knew that all the grocery (and liquor!) stores would be closed today, so wacky hijinx ensued while we tried to track down the necessary ingredients at various corner stores.
64: This very problem led to me repeatedly soaking and rinsing canned smoked oysters bought at the Stop'n'Rob down the street a couple years ago. Worked OK.
Happy Thanksgiving, y'all.
65. Ah the perils of a closed grocery store!
49. Is it really correct to categorize someone who eats fish as vegetarian. After all why is it called vegetarian?
As usual, instead of turkey we had a top sirloin roast with white rolls. Also, spinach salad, mashed potatoes, and peach cobbler. It's a miracle I didn't eat myself into a coma.
I had Thanksgiving dinner at a fancy restaurant in the land of my future in-laws, who are not big Thanksgiving people. It was... very different. But the cause of said future in-laws stated status is here, so it was also great. It is possible I'll feel driven to eat a whole turkey when I get home; time will tell.
Finally done. Well, I'll have to run another load of dishes in the morning, but this is it for now.
I made Gonerill's bacon sprouts. A huge success! Even my difficult grandmother, who generally doesn't eat vegetables or meat, liked them. Thanks Gonerill!
I was at a Tday party where an odd drunk old white New Orleans guy introduced himself to a half-Asian woman by saying, "I lived with a Chinese woman for six years!"
She responded, confused but deadpan, "Why?"
"Because... because I loved her."
Then he began to cry.
AWKWARD.
This post inspired a conversation among a bandmate and a mate in a more prominent band about, basically, why GENERATION AWESOME! doesn't produce many political songs.
AWKWARD.
I tried to parley a conversation about baby names into a jokey fake "eekbeat and I are having a baby, by the way" announcement. I'm not convinced my mom thinks I was kidding. So that's fun.
Further, my uncle also believes that the MBTA should be militarized to improve customer service. He thinks that every time a guard is unhelpful a supervisor should go to them and demand 50 pushups.
He thinks that every time a guard is unhelpful a supervisor should go to them and demand 50 pushups.
Ah, so Niedermeyer was not actually fragged by his own troops in Vietnam.
Thankgiving UK-style: "Part of the M42 is shut after a six-vehicle crash sent marshmallows and beer spilling out onto the carriageway.
"The northbound stretch was closed at junctions 10 and 11, near Tamworth Services, after several lorries and a van collided at about 0400 GMT.
"The Highways Agency said delays of about 30 minutes were expected and the section of road was likely to remain closed until Friday afternoon.
Drivers are being advised to use alternative routes."
AWKWARD.
There are those in this part of the world who quite sincerely believe northeastern liberals will be the end of us all. Since they were very old, and pretty obviously just yanking my chain, I stayed mum, but wow, it turns out there are people with life-size George W. Bush cutouts in their houses.
Its the ones with Bush Real Dolls that you have to worry about.
71 is awesome.
78 is yet more evidence that Sifu is a New England trustifarian, probably with obscure family links to Prescott Bush.
Wow, did we really just go 40 minutes without a comment, in the middle of the day?
Now that consumerism is dead, I find myself already nolstalgic for it. I bet today's long lines and occasional voluntary manslaughter at stores with heavily-discounted prices will be a last hurrah before we all turn to our new lifestyle of carefully rewashing each piece of aluminum foil and scraping the bottom of the coffee can hoping to find enough grounds to make a cup.
81: So you must have heard that WalMart story too, huh? That's gotta be a bad way to go.
If I were a union organizer, I would make that the centerpiece of my pitch: hazard pay on Black Friday.
our new lifestyle of carefully rewashing each piece of aluminum foil and scraping the bottom of the coffee can hoping to find enough grounds to make a cup.
One regular feature at Thanksgiving is my mom's reminisences of her deprived childhood in Siberia. This year it was about going through the garbage dump to see if anyone had thrown out any potato peels. (Also fond memories of planting delicious watermelons in the Ukraine after the war was over, but those weren't famine-related). I love it when she goes off on those stories, they seem like a bulletin from another planet. Curiously, the moral is never that you should finish everything on your plate, but instead that Americans eat too much.
This year there was also a Chinese woman who had grown up during the Cultural Revolution at the table, and she and my mom started going off on vaguely competitive starvation narratives before the rest of us distracted them.
I knew a guy who as a little kid during the Cultural Revolution. His own personal recollection was that it was fun, and he didn't have to go to school.
83: You can imagine a remake of "Norma Rae", with Reese Witherspoon standing on that little WalMart podium, holding up a sign that says "NO TRAMPLING".
Black Friday in NYC means the entire city is crawling with tourists. One of those tourists is my best college buddy, who wants to, of all things, go ice-skating in Central Park. Do you see what I do for love?
Chris Matthews in the Senate might do less harm than he does on the teevee.
A lot of Democrats really hate him, especially liberals, and oddly enough, so do most Republicans. And the mythical PUMAs really, really hate him, and all Hillary supporters and Clinton supporters.
He guy's got to be dreaming. Hopefully hill quit MSNBC and lose, and Rachel and Keith can find someone to replace him.
85: see, this woman's parents were schoolteachers, so they went off to the camps and she didn't get any food. It's the flip side of punishing the oppressors.
Mom did say that the Chinese woman had it worse than she did, because "you were singled out. When everyone is starving, you're all in it together so it's not so bad".
Where in Siberia? Mongolia is right next.
I hadn't know that PGD is half Siberian.
Not Siberian -- Polish Jewish refugees who fled east to Russia and were resettled in a Siberian labor camp by Stalin. Made their way back west, eventually to America, after the war.
the other day i bought coffee which i thought is instant and it was not, so have to buy a coffee-maker now
i'm thinking about just simmering it through like tea
i've read before comparative health impact studies of instant vs filtered coffee, the instant one being kinda unhealthy but it's just so convenient, the instant one, just stir and drink
I knew two daughters of a Stanford educated Chinese scientist who patriotically returned to China in 1948. His family was sent to the country during the CR. One sister spent 6 years slopping hogs. She liked the countryside OK, but not when she started to think she'd be there forever.
Both sisters are in the US now -- one an MD, one an engineer. So is their dad, who's retired.
"Son of the Revolution" is an autobiography of a guy who went through that. When he and his friends first heard about the CR, they became very militant, not realizing that they and their families were the main target.
i remember in Japan at our gradschool i used to go around turning the lights off in the corridors as if i was some kind of ward keeper or what, the whole building lighted in the evening and nobody seemed cared about that
If you make coffee by just pouring hot water on it you can call it cowboy coffee. Turkish coffee is something like that too.
It's a better story if you're half Siberian, PGD. But whatever you say.
i have to drink it that way i guess, just have to separate the coffee grains from it, don't like that, crumbs
never liked semolina porridge, the same sensation
Turkish coffee is something like that too.
Arg. This is not true. There's a whole process, and a special pot and things. I am particularly grumpy about this because I ordered it at a falafel place that said, "Turkish Coffee -- We do not mess around!" but just poured some hot water over some coffee grounds and cardamom and handed it to me. It was disgusting.
One regular feature at Thanksgiving is my mom's reminisences of her deprived childhood in Siberia.
My mother's lingering symptom from the Great Depression was that every once in a great while she would buy a loaf of cheap bread and throw it out just to prove to herself she could. These days the TV news is scaring her.
Some Turks disagree, Miss Bear.
Read, one thing you can get is a little funnel to set on top of your mug. You put a little coffee filter in it, with the grounds, and pour the hot water through it. It should be cheap, a few bucks, and it takes up much less space. Another option would be a French press, which is very easy to use and clean.
After ten years of French pressing, I finally broke down and bought a coffeemaker. It was about $15, the cheapest I could find, and I have to admit it's pretty convenient.
Wild Swans is pretty good, and the Cultural Revolution is one of the areas it covers.
I have this anthology of writing about China by Edgar Snow that came out right after the Cultural Revolution, but before people in the West really understood what it was about. There's an essay by an accomplished number theorist Hua Loo Keng who explains how the People taught him that number theory is a waste of time, and that he should be interested in linear programming instead. (Linear programming is useful for planning large-scale industry enterprises, like steel production, or tractor factories.)
aha, thanks, i was thinking about how things are so connected, just bought the wrong kind of coffee and have to buy a coffeemaker next etc
i bought at least the pot to boil water after Apostropher shamed me here when i said i microwave water and my sister was nagging me too like it's the wrongest way to cook, you'll earn you gastric cancer etc
Quaere: Daughter announced ambition to get MFA, teach creative writing. Do I need to organize an intervention?
Just tell her there are quicker routes to law school if that's what she really wants to do.
(Late, but internet-free Thanksgiving turned out to be nice.)
Even my difficult grandmother, who generally doesn't eat vegetables or meat, liked them.
Your grandmother must be very slender indeed.
Before dinner, my mother-in-law-elect produced a veil she wanted my fiancée to wear. This was the sixth time she did so.
The first time, my fi said, "I really don't want a veil. It's deeply at odds with how I feel about getting married to be covered up or have something obstructing my eyesight. End of discussion."
The fourth time, her mother said, "It's not a veil, it's a mantilla."
The fifth time, my fi said, "If you do this one more time I will go so crazy I will turn into a glass of orange juice and you won't ever have grandchildren because orange juice can't reproduce."
Last night, my fi headbutted her mother into a dresser and asked her if she was fucking retarded.
Her father came into the room and said, "You should wear a veil, your mother's going to overshadow you." When she got upset, he said, "What? You always say I should give your mother more compliments. I was giving your mother a compliment."
Then we had dinner, which exceeded my expectations, because the yams were made with kosher, i.e. vegetarian-friendly, marshmallows.
This was one of those families where pestering and meddling are interpreted as signs of love, right?
Semi-OT: Is there any imitative/aspirational food or drink substance that misses the real thing by a wider mark than Baco-Bits? Wines like Boone's Farm or MD are contenders*. I don't think Velveeta or Kraft singles are close. (Probably previously discussed here, but I could not find it if it was.)
*And I think the lack of anything similar in the "beer" line exposes the sophistry of the beer side of the beer/wine argument from the other night—although I agreed with the beerholes in theory.
Wow, Wrongshore, your fiancee sounds like she's really good in bed.
Yeah. I don't know why I didn't pipe up in that discussion.
110 to 107.
109: Your powers of deduction are considerable.
We had a whole previous thread about the topic.
112: I recall discussions of which were closest or acceptable in certain circumstances etc., but not which failed most comprehensively and have not found it through search. If you recall the name/date or have a pointer, thanks.
Your grandmother must be very slender indeed.
She is. She is just under five feet tall and probably about 75 pounds soaking wet. Meals with her are a tricky negotiation -- left to her own devices she will try to sustain herself on sliced apples, white cake, 7-Up and hard candy. Supposedly her stomach is too delicate to withstand anything more nutritious.
My parents have taken to buying Ensure for her by the case, which she likes because she has a prescription for it, so it affirms her self-perception of extreme frailty. She submerges her sliced apples in it and eats it like cereal.
I would worry more about her eating disorder, except that she's really doing okay -- she's been like this for as long as I've known her, and she's nearly 90 now, and still alert and getting around fine. Also, she's kind of a jerk, so it's hard to feel sympathy for her. Like, my dad (her son) made a dish of amazing sweet potatoes last night, and it is actually just the sort of thing she would generally love to eat -- very soft and sweet and gooey. I tried to get her to have some, and she was just about to try it, before I made the fatal mistake of saying that my dad made it, whereupon she made a face and refused to eat it. She really only liked the bacon sprouts because I made them, and I'm her favorite. Like I said, kind of a jerk.
bacon sprouts
Damn, I gotta plant me some of those.
If she's 90 her method must be working.
Jms, your grandma is very wise imo, less calories consumption means longer lifespan according to some studies