[Sca-cooks] The Ghost of Thanksgiving Future

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

We had a boring Thanksgiving dinner tainted with an excess of "I
Can't Believe It Isn't Butter" for no particularly good reason, since
no one is eating it for health reasons. But the subtle palates of my
relatives didn't seem to notice it the way my daughter and i do.
Perhaps my brother did, though. He doesn't like food and doesn't
understand the pleasures of eating good food. He's sensitive to
various chemicals in food, even those that occur naturally (for
example, almonds taste metallic to him), so he may have noticed -
perhaps this is why he doesn't like food much - and he's been lactose
intolerant since he was born.

The salad was pretty good though - my mother had an interesting idea,
then i suggested a thing or two, and Rosa, the Mexican woman who did
the cooking, added some stuff:
-- chopped romaine (i tear mine, but, well, i didn't make the salad)
-- fresh oranges with natural sections cut in 1/3s
-- sliced radishes
-- cut up avocado
-- jicama sliced in little sticks (pronounced hee-kah-mah, aka ben
koang, aka yam bean root)
-- drained bottled artichoke hearts

All my mom had in the house were a couple of nasty Kraft dressings -
full of sugar, corn sweetener, and high fructose corn sweetener
(shudder) - i just don't think salad dressing should taste like
dessert. So i went to the store and got a good "gourmet" vinaigrette.

Mirabile dictu, my mother actually liked my cranberry sauce, which i
invented last year. Wow! finally i did *something* right!
-- one 12-oz. bag fresh cranberries
-- 1 cup water
-- 1-1/2 cups white granulated sugar
-- 1 orange (pulp cut up and skin cut into tiny "matchheads")
-- 1/2 cup or more of fresh candied ginger, to taste (all i could
find was a tin of Reed's, the ginger ale people, and it was quite
good)
-- some powdered cinnamon to taste
-- a pinch of powdered cloves to taste
-- a pinch of nutmeg - not this time, as what was in my mother's
cupboard tasted like sawdust.

Cook until the orange peel becomes translucent (might be good to cook
it first, then add the cranberries). Refrigerate until serving time.
Top with toasted pecans.

I wrote up a long report on the dinner, but decided against boring
the list with it.

I did send my daughter, who is a good cook, the following suggestion:
In 2004 when it's my mother's turn to host again, she and i will cook
the dinner. She liked the idea. Finally a GOOD dinner. No marshmallow
sweet potatoes! No artificial butter flavored anything! No tasteless
and textureless stuffing! Whoo-hoo!

There were hardly any turkey leftovers - my mom and i ate what little
was left in about 2 days. I think we need a bigger turkey next time...

Anahita