[Sca-cooks] Special Dishes

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

Somebody wrote:
>  Don't we all have a particular food, without which the holiday seems
>  incomplete?

No.

Well, i like something with cranberries and something with pumpkin, 
but they don't have to be cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie.

I don't have particularly happy holiday memories, and i'd really like 
to make my own tasty recipes, but whenever i've tried my mother has 
complained. She prefers the same old stuff and i can't think of a 
single thing that is served that couldn't be improved. Additionally, 
my mom prefers very sweet things and i dislike very sweet things. 
Since she loads the menu with sweetened stuff, i often buy some 
things for myself.

I once i made a stuffing for the turkey once that had things in it 
like chestnuts - and on a different occasion i made a good cranberry 
sauce with some orange and spices and pecans in it - and on yet 
another occasion i made some sort of concatenation of a bavarian and 
a charlotte with the pan lined with lady fingers and filled with a 
sort of pumpkin mousse (i invented it and didn't write it down). My 
offerings were never praised and my parents preferred packaged bread 
stuffing, canned cranberries, and standard pumpkin pie.

I guess i won't get to have a good Thanksgiving dinner until my 
mother dies and that probably won't be for another ten or 15 years.

Hmmm-mmm, that gives me an idea. My daughter and i enjoy cooking 
together. Maybe my daughter and i can cook the meal in 2006 (next 
year it will be at my brother's wife's house and the same person will 
be cooking that meal who cooked the meal this year). We can make 
absolutely everything our way. There will have to be some sort of 
vegetarian proteinaceous dish for her and i can roast the turkey 
(because it won't be Thanksgiving for the other folks present without 
it), but we can do everything else our way together. And we can make 
a tiny dish of mashed candied yams with marshmallows just for my 
mother.

Daniel wrote:
>  Pickled peaches and those bright red cinnamon apple rings from the store.

Wow! That's a flash from the past. I don't remember if we ate those 
at Thanksgiving, but i loved those things as a kid! Thanks for the 
memory! I think i'll go to the store tonight and get a couple cans of 
peaches - there's an organic brand... and i can look for a recipe and 
cook the apples myself.

Anahita