[Sca-cooks] HAPPY THANKSGIVING

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

Well, the dinner was not so good. My mom hasn't cooked in a very long 
time. She has arthritis in her knees such that all the cartilage 
went. And she's old and doesn't have the stamina.

For quite some time, she and my dad took us out to dinner at a fancy 
(and i mean fancy) local restaurant. Once i had duck with some sort 
of interesting stuffing and a savory blueberry sauce. Quite unlike 
anything that would have been cooked at my mom's house.

This time it was cooked by her part-time maid, Rosa. She's made many 
a Thanksgiving dinner, but alas this was not a success. The turkey 
was overcooked and dried out. Because my daughter is a vegetarian, 
she made the stuffing separate in a pan - ALL the stuffing. Because 
there was so much in the pan, it was kinda gluey in the center. Would 
have been better if the turkey had been stuffed and she'd made a 
small pan outside the turkey for my daughter. She also made Brussels 
sprouts - she cut them in half, then boiled them - way too long - 
then pan fried them. They did not benefit by this treatment. There 
was also asparagus, fortunately NOT over cooked, but it didn't feel 
like a fall vegetable. The salad was mixed greens (and that red and 
white stuff - that's arugula, yes?). But the only dressings my mom 
had are thickened with gunk and overly sweetened with high fructose 
corn sweetener. I brought my own dressing (Annie's Shiitake and 
Sesame Vinaigrette) and ended up using most of it at dinner - 
everyone used it but my mom.

Because my mom wanted it, she made a sweet potato "casserole" - 
mashed and topped with marshmallows. My daughter and i went out and 
bought two unadulterated sweet potatoes and baked them. Much better.

Rosa told my mom she needed dinner rolls, so my mom bought two tubes 
of crescent roll dough - one Pillsbury and one Kroger brand. The 
Kroger had a hideous artificial taste and was artificially colored a 
garish yellow. For some reason, although the directions on the tubes 
were identical, the nasty Kroger thingies cooked faster. I think 
maybe only one person ate any.

The pumpkin pie was pretty good. The crust once again came out of a 
package, but was ok. The filling was made with sweetened condensed 
milk, which was also ok, although my mom made disparaging remarks 
about it. There were two cans of that shake and spray whipped 
not-quite-cream, which my mom likes and my brothers kids think is fun 
to play with. Thank goodness there is no Cool Whip in the house, 
that's even worse. But fortunately there was actually some real 
whipped cream, because my mom knows that my daughter and i complain 
if there is only that canned stuff.

I have made very few Thanksgiving dinners, because i have to go to my 
mom's. I like stuffing with something in it, not just packaged dried 
bread cubes. And i like to do "interesting" things to the pumpkin 
dessert - i once made a concatenation of pumpkin and pecan pie. That 
was good. I had offered to make something for dinner this year, but 
my offer was not welcomed.

The dinner conversation was cold and stilted because so many topics 
are off limits for a variety of reasons. I'd rather had Thanksgiving 
dinner with friends, but my mom finds ways to punish me if i'm not 
having it with her.

Fortunately my daughter was there and we hung out a bit for much of 
two days before she had to fly back to Philly. And then i visited an 
old friend and Huette in the LA area for a couple days.

I give thanks for friends.

Anahita