With Turkey Day approaching, what part of the Thanksgiving holiday are you most looking forward to?

-- Anonymous, November 19, 2001

Answers

Hanging out with my dad and watching a lot of movies.

Oh, and eating mashed potatoes.

-- Anonymous, November 19, 2001

The Iron Chef Marathon, of course!

That and matching my prodigious appetite for all foods related to Thanksgiving with JoLo's ability to take a 12 lb turkey and half a pound of yams and turn it into a dinner large enough to serve all our troops overseas.

I think I have lost before the battle has even begun.

-- Anonymous, November 19, 2001

Shopping with my grandmother the Friday after, I think.

And the UGA-Tech game, which might actually be good this year.

And slipping away to see The Smoker.

What I'm not looking forward to: spending time in my parents' house, which, it has now been proven, houses something that sends my allergies skyrocketing.

-- Anonymous, November 19, 2001

Chris, I am so with you.

1.) Gorging my damn self.

2.) Iron Chef marathon!

3.) Sleep sleep sleepity sleeping all day Friday without a care in the world.

-- Anonymous, November 19, 2001

Why I like THanksgiving, by T:

Oyster dressing, oyster soup, cornbread dressing, smoked turkey, roasted turkey, smoked salmon, asparagus casserole, mushroom rice, pecan rice, sweet potato souffle, my really good baked brie with cranberry chutney, roasted pecan salad with goat cheese, green beans, and turkey gumbo on Friday.

I also like the GA/GA Tech game, the Egg Bowl (MS State vs. Ole Miss, for those of y'all not in the Egg Bowl know), the Iron Chef Marathon, C meeting an awful lot of my relatives, and going out with my wild sisters and cousins.

Thanksgiving is our biggest and favorite holiday, and my family does it up right. We're having 41 people for dinner; my mother is so well-known for her Thanksgivings that the Times-Picayune printed an article about her on Saturday.

-- Anonymous, November 19, 2001

Oyster dressing, oyster soup, cornbread dressing, smoked turkey, roasted turkey, smoked salmon, asparagus casserole, mushroom rice, pecan rice, sweet potato souffle, my really good baked brie with cranberry chutney, roasted pecan salad with goat cheese, green beans, and turkey gumbo on Friday.

I'm going to cry.

Did you notice how "my mother's cooking" was not on that list I wrote above? Now, I love my mother (most of the time), and I know I'm not supposed to be talking smack about her cooking, but y'all, it wasn't until this year that I learned that the ideal way to serve cranberry sauce is NOT with the ridges from the can still showing.

Maybe I'll offer to take over the cranberry part of this year's meal. Anybody got a good, easy recipe?

-- Anonymous, November 19, 2001

Now, WG, I'll almost defend the canned cranberry stuff. I like it, but I'm the only one and didn't bother buying any this year.

But your comments about your Mother's cooking brought back memories of my Mother's Thanksgiving dinners back when I didn't have 400 miles distance as an excuse for avoiding them. She makes these nasty whole wheat blueberry muffins and some sort of cranberry sauce my sister and I call "The Cranberry Shit."

I'm looking for a good cranberry dipping sauce. I will peruse my cookbooks and cooking magazines and if I find one, I'll post a recipe. With due credit to the source, of course.

I'm cooking the feast this year and am looking forward to the meal. I've got the stuffing made and cooked already. I saw the Good Eats turkey episode yesterday and will be doing the bird the Alton Brown way. Oh, and since I saw the chicken stock episode, heck, I could probably make my own vegetable stock. Hmmmm.

-- Anonymous, November 19, 2001

My family has an enormous Thanksgiving! Always, even during blizzards, at least 50 people, normally 75 or so...everyone brings their specialty...my mother and her italian roast beef, my grandmas TO DIE FOR stuffing, and my aunts lemon merengue pie....*makes the Homer Simpson drooling noise*

Plus, the Buffy marathon! Whoo hooo!

-- Anonymous, November 19, 2001

Wait, Buffy marathon? Wha?

I'm going to my aunt's house with 30 other family members. I love having Tday over there, but the only drawback? No leftovers. There's nothing better than waking up on Friday and eating all over again.

-- Anonymous, November 19, 2001

It is on at *some* point this weekend...FX I think but don't hold me to it...

My sister and I plan on vegging out to Buffy for a whole night, whee!

-- Anonymous, November 19, 2001

sleeping I guess

and Buffy? I've always wanted to see what that show was all about (seriously, it's on at a bad time in my tv viewing time) ...maybe I'll have to find out what channel FX is here...hrm...that would give me something more to look forward to....

maybe I should make mom get mashed potatoes; or stuffing...wheee! get crazy!

-- Anonymous, November 20, 2001

WG, Melissa - www.southernliving.com. It will cure your cranberry ails.

Also, the recipe on the side of the cranberry bag is pretty good, and if you're comfortable playing with that recipe, try adding a little less sugar, a little orange juice, and some orange zest (or a dollop of orange marmalade, even).

-- Anonymous, November 20, 2001

Bless you, T.

Now, lest anyone mistake me for Snobby McNocranberryisgoodenough, I do like the canned stuff. My mother still teases me about how I inexplicably called it cranberry "pie" as a kid. When she serves it this Thanksgiving, I will invariably eat lots of it.

But that doesn't mean we can't try another cranberry dish.

-- Anonymous, November 20, 2001

Okay - here's a recipe for spicy cranberry-pear sauce, here's one for the class ic cranberry sauce, and if you type "cranberry chutney" into the search engine at www.foodtv.com, you get a great basic chutney recipe - I switch the dark raisins for golden raisins, though.

I like to make several different kinds of cranberry sauce - you can make them all in advance - and let people pick what kind they like, kind of like a salsa bar, but for turkey.

You're wondering what to do with all that extra cranberry sauce? Baked brie!

1. Get a box of frozen Pepperidge Farm puff pastry (it's what all the pros use, in fact, as making puff pastry dough is a climate- controlled pain in the ass), a wheel of brie, and your extra cranberry sauce.

2. Slice the brie in half through the middle - you'll end up with two rounds. Lay the bottom round (rind side down) on a sheet of pastry, and cut a circle in the dough along the circumference of the brie.

3. Take the same half of the brie, lay it on the intact sheet of pastry dough, spoon abotu 1/3 cup of cranberry sauce on the brie, top with the other half of brie, rind side up, and wrap the pastry up to the top of the brie/cranberry round.

4. Top with the circle of pastry dough that you initially cut, and use the extra dough to make little decorations, like an autumn leaf.

5. Use your fingers or a pastry brush to wash the dough with an egg that's beaten with a little bit of water, and keep the pastry cold until you bake it at around 425 degrees (or whatever temperature it says to use on the puff pastry box) until the pastry is golden brown.

-- Anonymous, November 20, 2001

Do y'all really like oyster dressing? It sort of squicks me out. Dressing is beautiful in all its bready glory. Anything else contaminates it. Except for gravy.

My entire family loves it, and my aunt makes what is, I guess, really excellent oyster dressing. One Thanksgiving, I guess about 3 or 4 years ago my uncle was helping my aunt (not his wife, his sister-in-law) inside with all her dishes etc and he dropped the oyster dressing on the sidewalk. I really thought he was going to get down on his knees and eat it right off the ground (a la Rachel and Chandler with the cheesecake). Either that or cry all day. A few people did cry.

-- Anonymous, November 20, 2001

Thanks, T! I did a search on cranberry sauce on www.foodtv.com too and found a few interesting things.

-- Anonymous, November 20, 2001

I'm not real big on dressing as a whole. It has that soggy bread taste. My very favorite things are homegrown green beans cooked with lots of ham (mmmmmm!), homemade giblet gravy (MMMMMMM!), and really good homemade sweet potatoes. I spit on anyone who approaches me with canned sweet potatoes. They are slimy and just NASTY. Do you know how easy it is to peel a frickin sweet potato, slackass???

My grandma cracks me up, for YEARS she has placed on the turkey day table a canned tube of cranberry sauce, can ridges intact and everything, in a super-fancy crystal dish. Hee!

-- Anonymous, November 20, 2001

Sleeping in. Eating. Reading. No work on Thanksgiving itself, though guess who's got a packed day come Friday?

-- Anonymous, November 20, 2001

Turkey & Cranberries....YUM!

Seeing family & friends...Yeah!

Having to work on Friday...Not so much!

-- Anonymous, November 20, 2001

Ooh, I wonder if I could pull off making these. Well, not without individual tart pans, I guess.

-- Anonymous, November 20, 2001