The war on Thanksgiving is being fought by my grandkids

[OffWithTheirHeads]

For the last several years they have insisted on hosting turkey day, eschewing the years of culinary experience and resultant T-day excellence that is found at Gram ma's house. Now we are forced to sit through standing rib roast cooked rib side up, Turkey so dry that if you could slice it thin enough you could use it as parchment and some pie type goo that I think comes from some "Smors cookbook. If this isn't a war, it should be. It is certainly an assault on my taste buds.

Sadly, it's gonna be years before they get enough experience to actually do this well. I guess we all have to start somewhere.

Mistakes come from lack of experience.
Experience comes from making mistakes.

But fuck em, We still cook our own Turkey. We do it several days after the traditional Turkey day. We call the dinner Thanksalot. We do it so we can have leftovers and also so we can have a decent Turkey dinner. It will be brined. It will be well seasoned with the skin loosened and herbs and butter rubbed between the skin and the meat. It will be started breast side up to let the juices flow into the top meat before turning it breast side down to finish. It will be moist and delish. It will come out of the oven looking like a picture on the cover of cooks magazine.

It will be served with a Salmon Mousse snack covered in Caviar, Bosc Pears in Blue Cheese and Sage and whatever side dishes we feel like investing our time on. The stuffing will be made out of my home made Rosemary Potato bread, from scratch. And Gramps (me) makes a mean turkey. There will be no fine China to hand Wash. There will be no Silver to polish.

The leftovers will be parceled out, shrink wrapped and frozen. The carcass will be turned into stock to cook white beans in.

The grandkids know that they can show up if they want but it is no longer a command performance. Funny, they always seem to show up.

And the best part, aside from not having to hand wash the China is that on Thanksgiving day, I can practically get the supermarket to pay me to buy the Turkey.

We, Gram and I, consider ourselves kind of a Thanksgiving Gorilla movement. "Hasta la Victoria Siempre"



And, although they won't admit it, it sets the bar for their efforts.

[lapfog_1]

1. Sadly, they have to apprentice to get the requisite experience.

Meaning that it does them no good to continue repeating the same thing every year hoping for different results. What will have to happen is that one of the offspring will have to recognize that your Thanksalot turkey is far superior to their efforts, so much so that they volunteer to come over for Thanksalot cooking day and "help out" (really to watch carefully what you do). Then, once they have dedicated themselves to mastering the art, they can start doing a proper Thanksgiving meal that you can look forward to (after a few years of missteps and accidents).

They got to have the desire to improve and the basic skill set first. Failing that, you are doomed to years of bad Turkey day meals.

BTW, can you save me a doggy bag of your Thanksalot???? Please?

[OffWithTheirHeads]

2. Sadly, I have tried to very gently offer suggestions

Like Mise en place they seem determined to learn the hard way. Us old farts are just old. We have spent a lifetime learning nothing. They seem to resent my subtle efforts to make their cooking easier.

But hey, If you are anywhere near the S.F. bay area, I would love to have you as a guest at Thanksalot. In fact, if I knew you were coming, I would pull out all the stops.

BTW, I still have control of X-mas eve dinner and we are having Goose. You are invited.

[lapfog_1]

4. Lived there 20 years.

But I live in Arizona now (God or FSM help me). Not having a Thanksgiving this year. Long story.

Trying to find a job in the Bay Area so I can get back there. So far, no luck (you don't know anyone that needs a Unix/Linux kernel hacker and all round storage guru... many patents and published papers to my name, one startup company founded, sold AFTER the dot-com crash for $12.5 M, second startup founded... went broke funding it with the proceeds from startup 1, etc. etc.)???

Sigh.

rural Arizona is not for me. Thought I had family back here, apparently I was mistaken.

Take a rain check on your Thanksalot leftovers. But hey, thanks for the invite. Really brightens my day.

[PSzymeczek]

32. Where in AZ?

I'm in SE AZ, close to the border.

[lapfog_1]

34. Probably close by... I'm near Benson. SE of Tucson. - n/t

[TicketyBoo]

3. I use my mother's ancient roaster

(patent date on it is 1906) which has a removable insert.

I use split-top wheat bread, dried for a couple of days for the dressing.



You will not taste a better turkey. It is very moist and falls off the bones.

[OffWithTheirHeads]

5. Here are two of mine, though I would kill for your mothers roaster

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Roast-Turkey-with-Red-Currant-Jelly-and-Citrus-Glaze-100380

I've been forced to make this for about 20 years because no one wanted me to change it.

After trying the first recipe for too many years, I tried this http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Pancetta-Sage-Turkey-with-Pancetta-Sage-Gravy-240379

Every bit as good!

[TicketyBoo]

6. That roaster

is fantastic. The lid is just a bit concave so that it automatically bastes the turkey. You just leave the lid on and the roaster does all the work.

[EmeraldCityGrl]

29. Is there a brand name on the roaster?

Or some way to Google it and try to track it down?

I love vintage cookware.

[JohnnyLib2]

7. Classic OP, off to the Greatest! Only on DU do you find

"But fuck 'em, we still cook our own turkey." Especially from grandparent about grandchildren!

REC


--Grandpa JohnnyLib :rofl: :rofl: :kick: :hi:

[LWolf]

8. And from an entirely different perspective....

I'm pleased as punch that my grown sons now do ALL the cooking for any family get together.

I don't like cooking. I can, and have, done it well for many years, but I never liked it.

So I started them cooking young.

When they were old enough to take over, I gradually put less and less effort and care into things I cooked, until they stopped wanting to eat anything I'd prepared.

Clever, huh?

Today we'll gather at my youngest son's house for Thanksgiving dinner. I don't know what he's serving. I don't know how good it will be. As long as I didn't have to cook it, I don't really care.

I've been assigned a food item to bring: something they are sure I can't mess up. Salad. I picked it up at the grocery store yesterday.

:hi:

[sharp_stick]

9. Mom, is that you?

I swear this is how I learned to enjoy cooking. By the time I was 17 I was doing any meal that didn't come out of a box at my house. As soon as I moved out my Mother (you I suspect) started to make edible meals again for herself.

[LWolf]

17. Well, I've never been to CT,

but I'm glad to know that there are other mothers clever enough to figure this out.

I DO make edible meals for myself now and again. ;)

Happy Thanksgiving.

:hi:

[sharp_stick]

22. Well done

but I'm originally from Montana, ever been there? ;-)

[LWolf]

27. No.

While I was born in the midwest, I haven't been east of the rockies since 1971.

:hi:

[sharp_stick]

33. I think Mom would

be happy to know that her "technique" has been applied to others.

I hope you had a great holiday with your kids. :hi: :hug:

[asjr]

12. I am on my own this year. Later I will have

Marie Callander's frozen herbed chicken. All I have to do is turn on the microwave, eat out of the container, throw the container away later and take a Zantac. I refuse to turn on the oven. The rest of the family can go where ever they want. I have grandchildren, step great grandchildren and I am certain they will eat well.

[Barack_America]

15. I was hoping you were local.

I would have invited you over.

We aren't having much (the dreaded Tofurkey for me and Turkey tenderloin for my husband), but we'd have been glad to have you!

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

[asjr]

18. I am in Manchester TN.

I didn't eat Marie's dinner. It was thigh and leg meat. I like the breast meat. I had cranberry sauce and stove-top stuffing. Believe it or not that is one of my favorite dishes. I quit making dressing from scratch ages ago. I appreciate the invitation though I don't know if you are in TN. Yours is the only invitation I received from anywhere.

[ensho]

10. how mean of you and grandma to diss your kids in public

nt

[mainer]

11. I notice you brine your turkey.

I've found that brining anything -- chicken, turkey, pork -- makes it way too salty for me. I know you're supposed to get rid of the salt by rinsing it, but it still tastes too salty. Do you have any tips on this?

Whenever I go to a restaurant and see brined meat on the menu, I always avoid that item.

[OffWithTheirHeads]

21. Simple. Put less salt in the brine.

[badgerpup]

13. Hey, thanks for the tip about the turkey!

I've usually cooked it breast side-down (looks like it's nesting in the roaster!), so the white meat would be juicy and not dessicated, but didn't realized that starting it t'other way round and then flipping it works. Hafta try that next time I do a turkey.

I'm not doing it this year, and I'm sort of :blush: to admit I miss the taste of my own stuffing.
I use celery, onions, chablis*, various herbs, pork sausage, and hazelnuts. The nuts soften up just a bit in the cooking so they're not quite crunchy...and they add a nice flavor.

*Quite a bit of chablis gets used during the preparation of my Thanksgiving dinners...
but the majority of it goes into the food. :toast:

[JonQ]

14. Disown them

nobody should be free to ruin thanksgiving and get away with it.

I like the thanksalot meal idea, might be worth keeping around just in case things go screwy with the original meal, a kind of back up.

Also I think you mean guerrilla, unless you were planning on mixing halloween in as well.

[Tuvok Obama]

16. Please enlighten one who knows nothing about cooking...

What is meant by "standing rib roast cooked rib side up"?

I looked up "standing rib roast," so half my question is already answered. What are the consequences of the "cooked rib side up" part?

[Gwendolyn]

20. Just imagine this upside down.

It should be cooked fat side up. I usually smear it with dijon and insert garlic cloves into little criss-cross cuts along the top before roasting

[Tuvok Obama]

26. Damn that looks good

I'd much rather have that than turkey. But as someone whose cooking skills are limited to making pizza (albeit some very fine pizza), my Thanksgiving role is limited to showing up, eating, and helping clean up afterward.

That is one delicious looking roast.

[EmeraldCityGrl]

30. That looks like an old cast iron stock pot

on the counter behind the roast. Wonderful for bean soups.

And that roast is gorgeous!

[Nikki Stone1]

19. K & R for "Thanksgiving Gorilla movement"

http://www.informatics.org/gorilla/gps.html

[DollyM]

23. We always have Thanksgiving after Thanksgiving . ..

Sadly, we don't have any family left. No kids, everyone else is scattered around the country. My 81 year old mother still works full time at Wal Mart and works Thanksgiving so that others with families can stay home for the day. So, we do a light meal for her when she comes home and then have Thanksgiving on her next day off. It takes the stress off and your right, the stores are practically begging to have you take their turkey's by then.

[intheflow]

24. I'm 45 and this year is the first year I've made a turkey I've been happy with.

I mastered the apple-cranberry-sage-sausage stuffing years ago, but have always put it in a bird with a pop-up timer. Relying on that pop-up has not done well by me. this year, no pop-up but it came out perfectly. So that means I've been torturing my guests for 20 years before getting it right. I feel for you, OWTH.

[avaistheone1]

25. Congrats. It sounds like you have figured this out to make it work for you.

You are free from most of grunt work and drudgery that Thanksgiving preparations can force upon us.
Kudos to you. I bet the rosemary potato bread is good. I love having rosemary rolls for Thanksgiving and Christmas too.

[EmeraldCityGrl]

28. Your recipe sounds fabulous.

I use many of the same techniques. Under the skin along with the butter I place thinly sliced
orange with a leaf of sage on top. It's so pretty at the end.

Your grandkids have inherited your love of the culinary arts. They just lack the experience to get it right.

What a wonderful thing to pass along to the next generation.

[blaze]

31. LOL!!!

Thanksalot!!!! :D

If I didn't have such a wonderful dinner to go to every year, I would absolutely join you in the creation of this new holiday!!

Thanks for the chuckle. :)

[Hekate]

35. Mmmmm. I'm dropping by....

:9 :9 :9 :9 :9 :9 :9

Hekate