Thanksgiving

My job was rolls and vegetable. Rolls should have been easy, but I managed to mess them up (not too horribly--they were one of Betsy's favorite parts of the meal and Brian commented favorably on them--but they were dry, lacking the chewy quality I look for in a dinner roll). I followed the The Fannie Farmer Cookbook basic recipe, increasing the butter and sugar a bit as my "Aunt Timmy's Dinner Rolls" recipe card says one can do for richer rolls. Probably one of my mistakes was not increasing them enough: I think I used just one extra tablespoon of each. My next mistake was that because I was baking them next to each other in cake pans I decided to bake them for a longer time at a lower temperature, as one might for a loaf of bread as opposed to rolls (none of Fanny Farmer's suggested shapes had the rolls touching each other during baking). Finally, using part bread flour when I ran out of all-purpose might have had an adverse effect.

I couldn't settle on a vegetable. Green beans, Brussels sprouts, corn, and creamed onions all seem Thanksgiving-y to me (though none are traditional parts of our family meal) and there was a spinach recipe that just sounded really good to me, so I headed to the grocery store still undecided. This probably wasn't a good idea as I ended up making three vegetables, two of which were practically untouched.

I think only Dorothy and I ate any of the creamed onions, this recipe more or less (I added a bit of grated nutmeg and I think used slightly more onions). I'd considered a fancier recipe involving pearl onions and actual cream, but decided that it would likely end up watery if made in advance and transported to Dorothy's house. I'd still like to try this recipe sometime but am glad I didn't go to the expense and bother of pearl onions for a gathering of non-onion-fans. (My mom later said if she'd seen them she'd have had some; I don't know how she missed them as they were the front dish in my trio of vegetable dishes.) Despite their unpopularity, however, I will continue to make the onions-in-white-sauce version for my own and Dorothy's enjoyment every Thanksgiving; I find them the perfect accompaniment to usually-dryish turkey meat.

Maque Choux from A Love Affair with Southern Cooking: Recipes and Recollections was a better (and more authentic judging from various Southern cookbooks I looked at) version of this Cajun corn dish than the creamy Epicurious one I tried last Thanksgiving. But I think I'm going to give up on my attempt to make corn a feature of Thanksgiving dinner, for no matter how appropriately Pilgrims-and-Indians-y it seems to me, no one wants to eat it (I did enjoy having leftovers to eat, so don't regret having made it). Perhaps some year I'll attempt an extra stuffing of sausage and cornbread (would never replace Grandma Dorothy's stuffing, but as far as I'm concerned, stuffing's the best part of Thanksgiving dinner and there can never be too much).

Finally, there was the extremely easy, quite delicious, and wildly popular Roasted Brussels Sprouts recipe from the Thanksgiving Google logo (an Ina Garten recipe that I later discovered I had copied last summer into my recipes-to-try notebook). I plan to make this every year and highly recommend it.

Everyone else made delicious food too, of course.