Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I'm grateful for the four days in a row that our family gets to play, to work on overdue projects, and to just hang out together.
There are a lot of reasons that Thanksgiving is so great. There are no presents, little cost, no worries about buying the right present, no discomfort about receiving those strange presents, no thank you notes. Thanksgiving is low key. You might visit your family, but it's no crime if you don't. There are no religious stresses to it. Anyone can be thankful. All you need to do is think of one thing that makes you happy. Like Oprah says, having gratitude is good for your attitude. I like to cook when I have time, so locking me up in my kitchen with some loud music and the basic ingredients makes me happy. I like eating that classic meal. But what is the classic Thanksgiving meal? It's different for everybody.
This year, I brined my turkey and put butter under the skin. It smelled so good coming out of the oven, I surprised myself by stealing some before it cooled. Usually, the turkey is the least of it. Our tradition is to have turkey, cauliflower and cheese sauce, candied yams, green beans, stuffing, canned jellied cranberry sauce, and gravy. Later, out comes pumpkin and lemon meringue pies.
So here it is, Lily Wallace's classic cheese sauce that makes our Thanksgiving really feel like Thanksgiving:
Mix 1 Tbsp. butter and 1 Tbsp. flour in a saucepan over low heat until it's melted and blended together. Add 1 1/2 cups of half and half. (Cream would be too thick but regular milk isn't quite rich enough for Thanksgiving or Christmas.) Whisk out the tiny lumps and then, after it has thickened nicely, take it off the heat and add 1 1/2 cups of shredded 7 year old cheddar from Wisconsin. Stir until the cheese is melted into the sauce. Ehlenbach's Cheese Chalet makes this amazing cheese. Oh, you can use any old cheddar, but if you want that special holiday cheese sauce, this is the place to get it.
Mike's mother was an extraordinary cook, so when we got married, he began to teach me her recipes. It was tragic that she died two years before we got married, but while we were dating, she did feed me well and treated me like a well-loved daughter-in-law. Mike never once complained about my cooking, but he's still teaching me his mother's techniques. Thankfully, I'm a little better at it than I was.
Her yams are simple, but difficult to get just right. When you do, there's nothing like them. Peel and boil a large yam until just soft when you stick a fork in it. Slice it into quarter inch slabs and lay them on an oiled shallow pan. Slice a stick of butter and place them on the yams. (You don't really need a pat of butter on each one. The melting butter will spread it around enough.) Sprinkle evenly with brown sugar, probably 2/3 cup total. Bake with your turkey at 350 degrees for about an hour until the edges get crispy, or in a slower oven at 225 degrees for longer. Longer and slower is better. The hard part is taking them out at just the right time. I don't always slice them to the perfect width and some get done before others. It's a good Thanksgiving when half of them are perfectly crispy and chewy at the same time. This stuff will gum up your teeth, so take out your retainer before you tangle with them.
Now, there's something about the way the flavor of the candied yams mixes with the cheese sauce on my plate that just says Thanksgiving to me. Plus there's a little bit of sage in the gravy and the flavor of the cranberry sauce that's usually mixed into the fray.
Now, my friend Ruby and I have different ideas about what is absolutely required to make a Thanksgiving meal right. She makes a special cranberry sauce and an ambrosia that can't be beat. Her boy requires apple crumble. Her daughters need pumpkin pie. Mike insists that it isn't Thanksgiving (or Christmas) without his grandma's lemon meringue pie. See the Eagle Brand Condensed Milk recipes for that one. For me, it used to be squash pie and my grandma's whole wheat honey yeast biscuits. Oh man, I can't even make those biscuits any more. By themselves, they'd kill me with the carbohydrates. But they were a lovely memory of Thanksgivings growing up. I'd never had cheese sauce or lemon meringue the way Mike needed it, but I'm a happy convert to his classic Thanksgiving meal.
Today, the day after Thanksgiving, I am just as grateful for those leftover flavors that mingle on my plate and say that I can keep celebrating, being grateful, for a few more days to come.
Thank you for listening, jb
There are a lot of reasons that Thanksgiving is so great. There are no presents, little cost, no worries about buying the right present, no discomfort about receiving those strange presents, no thank you notes. Thanksgiving is low key. You might visit your family, but it's no crime if you don't. There are no religious stresses to it. Anyone can be thankful. All you need to do is think of one thing that makes you happy. Like Oprah says, having gratitude is good for your attitude. I like to cook when I have time, so locking me up in my kitchen with some loud music and the basic ingredients makes me happy. I like eating that classic meal. But what is the classic Thanksgiving meal? It's different for everybody.
This year, I brined my turkey and put butter under the skin. It smelled so good coming out of the oven, I surprised myself by stealing some before it cooled. Usually, the turkey is the least of it. Our tradition is to have turkey, cauliflower and cheese sauce, candied yams, green beans, stuffing, canned jellied cranberry sauce, and gravy. Later, out comes pumpkin and lemon meringue pies.
So here it is, Lily Wallace's classic cheese sauce that makes our Thanksgiving really feel like Thanksgiving:
Mix 1 Tbsp. butter and 1 Tbsp. flour in a saucepan over low heat until it's melted and blended together. Add 1 1/2 cups of half and half. (Cream would be too thick but regular milk isn't quite rich enough for Thanksgiving or Christmas.) Whisk out the tiny lumps and then, after it has thickened nicely, take it off the heat and add 1 1/2 cups of shredded 7 year old cheddar from Wisconsin. Stir until the cheese is melted into the sauce. Ehlenbach's Cheese Chalet makes this amazing cheese. Oh, you can use any old cheddar, but if you want that special holiday cheese sauce, this is the place to get it.
Mike's mother was an extraordinary cook, so when we got married, he began to teach me her recipes. It was tragic that she died two years before we got married, but while we were dating, she did feed me well and treated me like a well-loved daughter-in-law. Mike never once complained about my cooking, but he's still teaching me his mother's techniques. Thankfully, I'm a little better at it than I was.
Her yams are simple, but difficult to get just right. When you do, there's nothing like them. Peel and boil a large yam until just soft when you stick a fork in it. Slice it into quarter inch slabs and lay them on an oiled shallow pan. Slice a stick of butter and place them on the yams. (You don't really need a pat of butter on each one. The melting butter will spread it around enough.) Sprinkle evenly with brown sugar, probably 2/3 cup total. Bake with your turkey at 350 degrees for about an hour until the edges get crispy, or in a slower oven at 225 degrees for longer. Longer and slower is better. The hard part is taking them out at just the right time. I don't always slice them to the perfect width and some get done before others. It's a good Thanksgiving when half of them are perfectly crispy and chewy at the same time. This stuff will gum up your teeth, so take out your retainer before you tangle with them.
Now, there's something about the way the flavor of the candied yams mixes with the cheese sauce on my plate that just says Thanksgiving to me. Plus there's a little bit of sage in the gravy and the flavor of the cranberry sauce that's usually mixed into the fray.
Now, my friend Ruby and I have different ideas about what is absolutely required to make a Thanksgiving meal right. She makes a special cranberry sauce and an ambrosia that can't be beat. Her boy requires apple crumble. Her daughters need pumpkin pie. Mike insists that it isn't Thanksgiving (or Christmas) without his grandma's lemon meringue pie. See the Eagle Brand Condensed Milk recipes for that one. For me, it used to be squash pie and my grandma's whole wheat honey yeast biscuits. Oh man, I can't even make those biscuits any more. By themselves, they'd kill me with the carbohydrates. But they were a lovely memory of Thanksgivings growing up. I'd never had cheese sauce or lemon meringue the way Mike needed it, but I'm a happy convert to his classic Thanksgiving meal.
Today, the day after Thanksgiving, I am just as grateful for those leftover flavors that mingle on my plate and say that I can keep celebrating, being grateful, for a few more days to come.
Thank you for listening, jb
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