Thoughts on Thanksgiving food

This is my 100th post on Blogger. *throws confetti* One of these days I'll find a way to move all my old Livejournal posts over and you can see what fun college was for me ;)

While reading my facebook posts this morning, a comment on an old friend's post was intriguing. Her post yesterday was about brining turkeys. I got pulled into a little mini-discussion on the comments about which brine is best to use. (We use Alton's brine recipe btw) Her mother commented that my friend is so much more adventurous in the kitchen that she had been. Then another older relative of hers commented that she herself had never brined and that [my friend] was truly more adventurous. But I don't see her as adventurous because, well, that's the same way I cook. Which got me thinking . . .

Has our generation really taken leaps and bounds away from our grandmas' cooking?
So here's some things my husband and I couldn't be caught dead without:

• smoked paprika and Worcestershire sauce in my green bean casserole
• brine for my turkey
• a roasting bag for the turkey (or most long term roasting operations)
• bourbon in my pecan pie
• Chinese 5 spice in my apple pie
• bacon for lardon
• ponzu (citrus soy sauce)
• beef stock
• roux
• shallots
• savory sweet potato dishes (instead of candied casseroles)
  

So, my Granny has always been a wonderful cook and did far more things from scratch than my mother. But you must also remember that she was a housewife in the days the TV dinner and the casserole too. She would follow recipes to the letter and they were the kind that pretty much came printed on the side of the can of condensed soup. My mom added a few innovations, mainly the addition of the roasting bag for the turkey (which came out when I was in grade school I think). My grandmother had never used one and was of the basting every 20 minutes generation. The bag, IMO, creates a far superior juicy bird with crispy skin (and it's a heck of a lot easier to clean up the carcass too).

But we just find that the addition of some flavor profiles that my ancestors never would have used regularly are what get me the most praise in my holiday cooking. Like Chinese 5 Spice or ponzu . . . my Granny would never have dared step foot into an Asian grocer to get these ingredients. White housewives just didn't do that way back in the day, even if there had been an Asian grocer in her mid-western world. And yes, now I understand that you can grab these ingredients at your closest mega-supermarket these days, but even 10 years ago I couldn't find them. They just bring our fuller, more rounded flavors. The same with smoked paprika and Worcestershire sauce in my green bean casserole. And woah, let me tell you about my discovery of the savory sweet potato dish about 4 years ago (it was a side for Christmas dinner at my moms, which btw, I always insist on roast beef instead of ham - yeah, I'm a pain in the putoot). I have never had a more requested dish for pot-lucks and holiday dinners (well, other than my bourbon pecan pie). Most people forgo regular mashed spuds in favor of the sweets, and in all honesty, we know it's because they're not candied.

We like to thank Food Network around our house for getting us to try out new ingredients. Imagine if our grandmothers or even our mothers had had access to this channel when we were young and impressionable and picky eaters. On a side note, my hubby's favorite food at Thanksgiving has always been the green bean casserole. But his mother always made the boring recipe from the side of the can. Now, he can't imagine eating any other than my recipe :)

Happy eatings everyone.