Turkey & Stuffing

Happy Thanksgiving Week!

It’s Thanksgiving week in here in the USA. If you’re in Canada, I hope you enjoyed your celebration on October 13th. I had the opportunity to celebrate Thanksgiving in Canada twice in the past. It was kind of cool to get to be thankful, then to do it all over again six weeks later. I will admit though, it seemed to early to celebrate in mid-October.

I find it pretty ironic that those five turkeys (along with about 40 more) were just outside my front window as I started to write this post. Don’t they know they could end up on our table in under a week? I guess they know I’m not a hunter. What else can explain their coming right up to the house and eating the plants outside the door? Good thing we live on 14 acres so the neighbors didn’t see me chasing them away…with a broom. Very manly of me, I know.

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. Not only is it smack dab in the middle of the end-of-year holiday season (Halloween through New Year’s), but it also has the most flexibility at the dinner table. And to top it off, there really isn’t anything else going on that day (no costumes and trick-or-treating, no presents, no late-night partying/driving). Pretty much food, visiting, and sometimes football. There historically hasn’t even been any shopping, although it looks like that trend may be changing a bit this year with some stores open on Thanksgiving itself. Honestly, that’s not a move I really like.

Back to the meal though, since this is Hectic-Kitchen.

I’ve spent Thanksgiving with lots of different folks, sometimes at our house, sometimes at theirs, sometimes on neutral ground. Each time I discover that every family, and every cook, has a different set of family recipes that have been handed down. And then there are rebels like me who’ve even dared to add things to the menu.

In my case, my Mom and Grandmother had some recipes that I’ve put on the family table for years. If you’ve read my blog (www.hectic-dad.com) then you know that I’m married, have eight kids, have a sister with ten kids and my wife comes from a family of ten, all of whom have families of their own. You honestly never know how many will be at our house for Thanksgiving. Over the years I’ve attempted to adapt to the guests at the table, and I’ve tried to please my entire family…but I’m not really winning that battle. I do a fairly decent job of putting a meal on the table where some of everything is consumed by some of everybody. There are a few things I just won’t let go of.

So today I’m going to fire the opening salvo at our Thanksgiving Menu for 2013. If my family sees this, I’m sure I’ll get some grief about certain items, but that’s to be expected. Some items will be missing. Some will be different than expected. Some things will be there that a group will say “nobody ever eats”. Tough turnips guys. I’m making the meal, I get to setup the menu.

We are 100% traditional in terms of the main course. We have turkey. As big a turkey as I can find. This year has been a bit difficult, as there was apparently some plan by the turkeys in the US to try and slim down. If that’s really the case, this whole fitness craze has gone too far. I want a 20+ pound turkey on my table…I hate having to make two depending on crowd size. So all you turkeys out there who happen to read this…fatten up. Please!

I also stuff our turkey. That’s where the first battle of the taste buds begins. I grew up with a sausage-based stuffing. Not a sage-based stuffing. Not a cornbread stuffing. No raisins. No nuts. No apples. I love all those variations, just not on Thanksgiving. I make a traditional stuffing from a recipe that started with my Grandmother, was modified by my Mom, and now has some modifications of my own. The recipe card that I start from is so grease-stained it’s almost embarrassing. But then I realize how much history that card has attached to it. It’s kind of cool!

I’m from the Chicago area. Apparently we broke all sorts of linguistic rules in our family, happily alternating between calling the mishmash in the bird “stuffing” and “dressing”. I remember hearing both as a kid. I’ve been told that we were “supposed” to call it “stuffing” because we lived in the North. Oh well, I guess we’re failed Yankees!

Linguistics aside, I come from a long line of sausage-based stuffers along the lines of a traditional English stuffing (since Wikipedia says that’s where that variation comes from). And the stuffing was made from scratch. Well, croutons were the base, but I’ve even made those from scratch for this stuffing. Honestly, it was no better that way, so I always buy my croutons. Don’t fret, I’ll have a recipe link.

My wife, on the other hand, comes from a long line of Stove Top stuffing eaters. No stuffing the turkey. Make the stuffing from a box (or in their cases, a virtual caseload of boxes). Since we’re all so adamant, we usually have two kinds of stuffing on the table. For the past couple of years I’ve actually made a homemade Stove Top clone that’s gone over OK with them. But to be 100% honest, they seem to prefer a 50-50 mixture of Stove Top Chicken + Stove Top Turkey stuffing made exactly as the box instructs. No variations, please!

I only stuff the turkey with my sausage-based stuffing. My thought, I’m doing the work, I get to use the stuffing I want. Besides, my wife doesn’t like Stove Top from the bird, so it’s my feeble attempt at making her happy on this count too.

So in a lot of ways, our dual-stuffing solution on the table neatly bridges our two family histories as well as creating a new tradition for our nuclear family. I’ll admit, tying stuffing to traditions is a bit weird, but I sure hope you weren’t expecting normal here. One of those synonyms of hectic is crazy, and that’s a pretty apt synonym much of the time.

Next time, read about our struggles over potatoes!