A Redneck Foodie Thanksgiving....

Have you ever noticed how different Thanksgiving Day menus are between families? Nearly everyone thinks that theirs is "traditional," but the minute you grow up and visit other families, you realize that there's no such thing as "traditional" really. As a child, Thanksgiving in my house always started with the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade and a pan of Pillsbury cinnamon rolls. The day progressed with the preparing of a large turkey...no frills. The bird was cleaned, giblets removed, inside rubbed with salt, and placed in a flour dusted roasting bag for the allotted time. I've had some really dry turkey in my day (no names...) and seen a lot of fancy, shmancy stuff done to a bird, but for me, nothing tops my mom's traditional version. The bag never lets it get dry, and the flavor speaks for itself. It's really what turkey was meant to be in my opinion. Along side this prince of poultry, which incidentally is called "suka ta" in the Osage language -- literally translating to something like "meat chicken," was always a spread of baked stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole with a scattering (not smothering) of marshmallows, gravy (both giblet and plain), green bean casserole, cranberry sauce (both gelled and whole berry), whole kernel corn, and rolls. My apologies to Dr. Atkins.... At some point during the preparation of all this, the men in my family usually came back from hunting to skin things on the back porch before cleaning up and sitting down to the meal. Last but certainly not least, we ritualistically finished the festivities with my grandmother's world famous pumpkin pie, pecan pie, and my mom's pumpkin cake with cream cheese icing.

Since I moved away from home, I've had a couple of different versions of the "traditional" Thanksgiving. My in-laws celebrate this particular holiday at deer camp, a tradition I really enjoy. Being in the woods lends itself to this particular day. Being a house full of guys plus my sainted mother-in-law, the spread usually consists of fewer sides and at least three different kinds of meat. The thing I like best about Thanksgiving at deer camp (other than the nature) is that leftovers rarely make it out alive.

Since moving further away from our families, my husband and I have enjoyed a couple of Thanksgivings just the two of us. This has the charm of being romantic and very low key. The first year I roasted turkey legs and made smaller portions of several of the usual sides. The next year, we had steak....THANK YOU. Despite enjoying these forays into the noticeably nontraditional, it was nice to digress a bit this year. We returned to some old favorites while enjoying a few new comers to the table...both people and dishes. Part of my new step family joined us this year and brought with them a couple of new requests that made very nice additions to the feast. This year's menu in all of its gluttonous glory included -- Turkey made mom's way but rubbed down with a little butter on the outside for flavor and color. Mashed potatoes and gravy, both plain and giblet as before. Baked stuffing with fresh sage added to onions while they were being carmelized. The green bean casserole had to compete head-on with a crispy green bean and bacon combo of my stepbrother's. In cooking as in business...a little competition proved beneficial to the consumer. The usual sweet potato casserole took a different turn by being topped with marshmallows on one half and brown sugar and pecans on the other. What was the vote for the official topping? Right down the middle! My previously blogged about cheese grits made an appearance. They were a nice addition that worked well for breakfast leftovers to boot. My only caution is that I forgot how grits expand....they're like those sponges you put in the water that just keep growing and growing and growing. You never need to cook as many as you think you do. Two kinds of cranberry sauce and rolls topped off the meal. There was a sad little bowl of corn, but I don't think anyone ate it at all.

As you can guess from this list...the food was wonderful, but we could have fed ourselves four times over. That, of course, did not deter our dessert love: pecan pie, pumpkin pie, apple pie, and Italian cream cake. A couple of notes about desserts, I did forget that layer cake has to cool before being tipped out of the pan. Please learn from my mistake so you will have a lovely three layered cake rather than our vertically challenged version. Having said that, the recipe below is the best Italian creme cake I've ever had. The icing alone is amazing if you need a cream cheese icing for anything. I tried to get fancy with the apple pie by cutting leaves into the upper crust. The good news is that the left over leaves were beautiful on the pumpkin pie. The bad news is that the leaf holes were too big and caused the top of the apple pie to wilt. Thankfully, slouchy apple pie is still apple pie... The pecan and pumpkin pies were pretty much perfect.

(As a postscript...you can find my recipes for pecan and pumpkin pie on my Thanksgiving 2011 blog.)

Italian Cream Cake
1 stick butter
1/2 cup shortening
2 cups sugar
5 egg yolks
2 cups flour
1 tsp soda
1 cup buttermilk
1 tsp vanilla
2 1/4 cups coconut
1 cup chopped pecans
5 egg whites

Cream the butter and shortening. Add sugar and egg yolks beat well. Sift and combine flour and soda and add slowly to creamed mixture alternating with buttermilk. Stir in vanilla, coconut, and nuts. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks (I like to add a little cream of tartar to make this work better). Divide the egg whites into three portions. Fold the first portion into the batter until well blended. Fold the second portion into the batter mixture being careful to maintain as much "fluff" as possible. Fold the last portion into the batter mixture using the fews number of folds possible to thorough combine.

Pour batter into three greased and floured 8 inch round pans. Bake at 350 F for 25 min or until done. COOL cakes, turn out, stack and frost with...

Cream Cheese Icing
1 8 oz package of cream cheese
1/2 stick butter
3 3/4 cups powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla
chopped pecans
milk

Beat cream cheese and butter until smooth. Add sugar and mix well. Add vanilla and beat vigorously until smooth. Spread on cake and sprinkle the top with pecans.