What no gravy?

Ah Thanksgiving. America's finest secular holiday, where we give thanks to the Indians for helping our ancestors survive that first harsh winter and honor them by recreating the splendid feast they created (and possibly by making a quick trip to the local casino as well...). If you're family is anything like my family, it means a meal with enough food to feed 50 that is then served to a gathering of 15 is the centerpiece of the holiday.

Really, Thanksgiving is the one true holiday we have in America where food takes centerstage in every home across the country. And not only that, but the ubiquitous array of dishes is amazing given the vast cultural differences that encompass our country. My family, most likely similar to yours, does it pretty traditional. There's the turkey, the stuffing, the gravy, the cranberry sauce, the green bean casserole, the sweet potato casserole, the mashed potatoes, the pies (and a ham just for the hell of it), a true feast of feasts. And all across the country, at least as much as I can tell from friends and television, everyone else is enjoying almost identical dishes.

I would love to be there with someone from a distant country whose first visit to America just happened to fall on Thanksgiving day, and who was lucky enough to be able to join a family for his or her first meal in the states.

"So is this a traditional American meal?"

"Well sort of, its kind of been adapted for modern times, but the basic concepts are there"

"So it is more similar to how you eat now?"

"....yeah....well we don't actually eat any of this stuff at any other time of the year"

"so it's neither traditional nor contemporary?"

"actually I would call it a half-assed combination of the two. Which is what makes it all the more American in the first place"

So yeah, it amazes me how ingrained these dishes are in our culture....for one day a year. How do the turkey, green bean, and yam manufacturers cope with such a spike in demand? And even beyond that, the dishes are not exactly representative of what the pilgrims ate at the original thanksgiving either. There are inspirations there no doubt, but I highly doubt that Squanto brought along a of Cream of Mushroom soup for the green bean casserole, and Pocahontas probably didn't pull a bag of marshmallows out of her purse for the yams (I know she wasn't there, but you try naming another Indian).

What we have today is some crazy concoction that mixes 17th century ingredients available at the time and mid 20th century Betty Crocker culture into a tasty, but curious feast. The turkey is perhaps the one true, unchanged element throughout the years, but even so, back then he wasn't the busty, roided-up specimen he is today.

In my family we've experimented with some deviations in the past, but this year the meal stayed pretty true to form. I had intentions of trying to do a take on these, something you should really try if you're in Milwaukee, but laziness got the best of me and I ended up contributing a 12 pack of Wisconsin's own Spotted Cow to our family meal.

I'm guessing everyone else had a similar meal last Thursday, and a toast to those who prepared the food and put in the time. Its a meal with lots of prep to make dishes that we wouldn't actually ever request to have made in the first place at any other point in the year, but yet somebody's got to do it. And hopefully they did the dishes justice, as my family did.

"This time we DIDN"T forget the gravy" is the
traditional family blessing at our house


Some traditional asian slaw and my Grandma's world famous
butterhorn rolls finished off the plate.