Thanksgiving

Growing up, one of my favorite holiday dishes was my great-grandmother's noodle kugel. Kugel is one of those things that has a wide variety of meanings - it roughly translates as pudding or casserole. In my family's case, noodle kugel was a sweet baked dish composed of egg noodles loaded with cream cheese, sour cream, eggs, and pineapples. It is one of the family recipes that I got from my grandfather, though I know that the version that he gave me was changed a bit. Like me, he was a tinkerer with food.

This Thanksgiving, I tried two new dishes, both of which worked as well as I could have hoped. The first of these was a butternut squash dish. My brother had requested squash. I was concerned because we'd already worked out the rest of the menu and it was heavy. I wanted a lighter vegetable in there.

I decided to try to make something light using butternut squash.

I started off with a maple-balsamic dressing: balsamic vinegar, olive oil, maple syrup, a couple cloves of garlic, and some mustard to emulsify it a bit.

I'd love to make my own cranberry sauce - maybe a cranberry chutney - for Thanksgiving, but my mother insists that we have canned cranberry sauce. This isn't unusual, apparently.

Personally, I'm not a huge fan of the stuff, though it can have its uses in moderation. Given the chance, I'd alter it - add some real cranberries, orange zest, and things like that, but she'd object.

I began to wonder whether there was anything I could do to make it more interesting.

On Friday, I told you why you shouldn't stuff your turkey. I also promised that I'd tell you how to make a turkey dressing that is cooked outside of the bird that tastes at least as good as stuffing cooked inside the turkey.

It can be done, and it is not that difficult.

My family, like many, has a bad habit of Late Turkey Syndrome. Traditionally, we'd plan for Thanksgiving Dinner to be served at, say, six. The turkey wouldn't be done for another hour or two. A few years ago, my brother had our family over for Thanksgiving at his place in California, and he let me cook the turkey. I've been doing it since, and we've been free from Late Turkey Syndrome.

How did I do it? Read on...

I don't think that I've extolled the virtues of my vegetable peeler to you all. I should. It is awesome. I know a lot of people swear by those Y-shaped peelers. I admit, those are better than those all-metal swivel peelers. My peeler, though? I bought it because I hated my old potato peeler. I saw this one. It is a Kitchenaid Euro Peeler. It isn't the fancy one, either. It is the cheap, $6 or so version.

And so it begins...

Actually, it began last weekend, when Angela and I went over to my parents' house for dinner. (They made steak. It was good.) After dinner, my mother and I sat down and hashed out a menu for Thanksgiving. There was some negotiation involved. For some reason, she was adamantly against the idea of soup.

I don't know why. She loves soup.