Sunday, November 26, 2006
welcome to the suck. it's cold here. really cold. -22C cold. this is an electric kind of cold. If you are underdressed in this cold and get outside, your heartrate accelerates precipitously. This is the fight-or-flight response. Your autonomic nervous system knows if you stay out much longer you are going to die. Boston never gets this cold. and it is still November.
Expatriot thanksgiving was a rousing culinary success despite a small turnout (more leftovers for me). it was done generally without recipes which was invigorating if a bit harrowing. sweet and sour kale was a surprise hit (adapted from springydog's collared greens recipe) as was the stuffing (in bird with excess put inder the skin of the breast and thigh). I went with a stuffing of butter, savoury, sage, lightly toasted white bread, celery, onion, and sausage. they sausage was utterly superfluous and will be omitted next time. The turkey was successfully juicy, despite Erma Rombauer's hysterical warnings about the cooking style I employed (aluminum foil covered at 350F).
My desserts were sugary but lacked the quality or daring of the main dishes. but sugary goes a long way. I wound up having to remove both the pumpkin pie and the chocolate pie from their shells in order to tweak the batter (this is harrowing part of no recipes). remember kids, don't be like billy, avoid this at all costs. trying to get pie filling out of a pie shells is tremendous pain. Taste the batter first. Nobody ate the pumpkin pie for the second straight year. Pumpkin pie and mashed sweet potatoes are not staples of canadian thanksgiving. But this year I got smart and skipped the arty, all day, bon appetite pumpkin pie in favor of the classically banal one.
I spent of bit of time thinking about why we make as large a meal as we do on thanksgiving and what that means (mine outsized its diners a full two-fold and outsized any meal I had made in 5 months at least 10 fold in time and volume). I muddled around in my head about this being a gustatory halloween for a culture that has had its puritanical roots morphed into a disdain for the obese. Or a domestic halloween for groups of people who emphasize professional achievement over personal care.
I also considered the fact that pumpkin pie is a classic thanksgiving dish, because it is so utterly egalitarian. you can't screw it up, and you can't really make it better. no application of love or money changes pumpkin pie. the yuppie-foodie industrial complex has essentially passed this dish by. it is just canned pumpkin, cream, egg, sugar and spices. even that arty one I made last year isn't really any better. I believe this to be beautiful. As each american mass movement has give rise to the hope of giving the populace common ground only to be shattered by exclusionism or cultural elitism (cinema, TV, professional sports) pumpkin pie remains stalwart. pumpkin pie, we salute you
Expatriot thanksgiving was a rousing culinary success despite a small turnout (more leftovers for me). it was done generally without recipes which was invigorating if a bit harrowing. sweet and sour kale was a surprise hit (adapted from springydog's collared greens recipe) as was the stuffing (in bird with excess put inder the skin of the breast and thigh). I went with a stuffing of butter, savoury, sage, lightly toasted white bread, celery, onion, and sausage. they sausage was utterly superfluous and will be omitted next time. The turkey was successfully juicy, despite Erma Rombauer's hysterical warnings about the cooking style I employed (aluminum foil covered at 350F).
My desserts were sugary but lacked the quality or daring of the main dishes. but sugary goes a long way. I wound up having to remove both the pumpkin pie and the chocolate pie from their shells in order to tweak the batter (this is harrowing part of no recipes). remember kids, don't be like billy, avoid this at all costs. trying to get pie filling out of a pie shells is tremendous pain. Taste the batter first. Nobody ate the pumpkin pie for the second straight year. Pumpkin pie and mashed sweet potatoes are not staples of canadian thanksgiving. But this year I got smart and skipped the arty, all day, bon appetite pumpkin pie in favor of the classically banal one.
I spent of bit of time thinking about why we make as large a meal as we do on thanksgiving and what that means (mine outsized its diners a full two-fold and outsized any meal I had made in 5 months at least 10 fold in time and volume). I muddled around in my head about this being a gustatory halloween for a culture that has had its puritanical roots morphed into a disdain for the obese. Or a domestic halloween for groups of people who emphasize professional achievement over personal care.
I also considered the fact that pumpkin pie is a classic thanksgiving dish, because it is so utterly egalitarian. you can't screw it up, and you can't really make it better. no application of love or money changes pumpkin pie. the yuppie-foodie industrial complex has essentially passed this dish by. it is just canned pumpkin, cream, egg, sugar and spices. even that arty one I made last year isn't really any better. I believe this to be beautiful. As each american mass movement has give rise to the hope of giving the populace common ground only to be shattered by exclusionism or cultural elitism (cinema, TV, professional sports) pumpkin pie remains stalwart. pumpkin pie, we salute you
# posted by 8yearoldsdude @ 4:40 PM 
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So to me, the food is only half the story. The (crazy) guests are the other half. For example, at the dinner I attended, my cousin's new inlaws attended with a large, mangy golden retriever. You can imagine the rest. --EWK
# posted by 
: 5:08 PM
: 5:08 PM
Hail to the Egalitarian Pie. I think it's very Canadian. We like nothing better than to take down anything that might think it's getting ahead, or prop up something that hasn't quite made it big. That's what paying 52% of your income into taxes is all about. It's just that when you have chocolate mousse cake, coffee cake, and cranberry brownies, nobody is going to go for the Egalitarian Pie. And that's why as soon as you get out of med school, you head straight across the border. At home, we always have yam and pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving. And no one is allowed to upstage the pie with other offerings.
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# posted by : 5:35 PM
: 5:35 PM << Home
