eG Foodblog: racheld - Thanksgiving and Goodwill

[racheld]

rachel,

What a beautiful blog and spectacular Thanksgiving Dinner.  It made me feel as if I was back at my Aunt's in the Midwest for Christmas.

Thanks so much!

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Thank you so much; we're right here---two guest rooms, good cookin' if you travel.

rachel

[mizducky]

Terrific food, and a really charming poem.

(The tea set is darling, too!)

[Kim Shook]

I wish your blog could go on indefinitely.

Ann

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Me, too. I want to live with Rachel - not in any scary, internet stalky way , I just love everything I read and see and experience in all of your posts here, Rachel! I am so glad you printed your entire Fairey Tea poem. I just love the poem and the story behind it. The artist is wonderful, too!

Thanksgiving dinner looked wonderful. I really missed my pimento cheese this year. MIL has a little yankee in her and never has it! Oh, well, I am in charge of Christmas Eve dinner and it will be there!

Kim

[racheld]

well, Rachel now that our Thanksgiving is over I can allow myself the pleasure of reading about yours--I'll be back tonight to read every page--it will be a midnight treat!

Zoe

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I hope you'll enjoy it---the lovely pale turquoise soap graced the upstairs bath.

Thanks again,

rachel

[racheld]

That's a WONDERFUL story, and the pictures to go with it are PERFECT.  How fortunate: for you, that the fairies were willing to pose for the artist; for Gracie, that's you're so insightful and clever; for us, that you're so willing to share.

You've added yet another blessing to this holiday season.  May the blessings return manifold to you.

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AWWW, Smithy!!! And blessings on you as well.

We're all just so fortunate that magic IS.

[racheld]

It's so nice to finally have time to sit with your blog, so cozy and homey and old-fashioned in the best possible.  Thank you for sharing your week with us, Rachel!

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Three of the best attributes possible---thank YOU, Abra!!

rachel

[racheld]

Terrific food, and a really charming poem.

(The tea set is darling, too!)

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Thanks, Miz D---I love the teaset as well; it's so small, a fingertip would fill the cup. The fairy asleep in a nutshell was a gift from them this past Christmas.

I do, however, feel that in contrast to all that cold china, the fairy folk would have been much better served had they been offered sanctuary in your tres elegant hat.

Edited November 25, 2006 by racheld (log)

[demiglace]

I missed our family Thanksgiving this year due to a viral thingy..I feel like I just had Thanksgiving because of your blog..and it was one of the best ever! Thank you for your Southern hospitality!

Edited November 25, 2006 by demiglace (log)

[racheld]

I wish your blog could go on indefinitely.

Ann

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Me, too. I want to live with Rachel - not in any scary, internet stalky way , I just love everything I read and see and experience in all of your posts here, Rachel! I am so glad you printed your entire Fairey Tea poem. I just love the poem and the story behind it. The artist is wonderful, too!

Thanksgiving dinner looked wonderful. I really missed my pimento cheese this year. MIL has a little yankee in her and never has it! Oh, well, I am in charge of Christmas Eve dinner and it will be there!

Kim

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Oh, Kim; you would be most welcome. I had friends once say that they wanted to go live at to Camp Rachel.

This has just been such a nice experience, and I SO appreciate the warm reception. I'm so very glad you liked our little story. And you go get out that Paminna Cheese recipe and make you some, right now.

Thanksgiving was quite a day, and I hoped to convey some of the rich, longtime heritage of the Southern Thanksgiving. I thought of so many occasions in the past in which family or friends celebrated the holiday, and the ways and little rituals and handed-down recipes that are included year after year.

My own memories and my book memories and family tellings all swirled together into one huge history, and I had to sift among them for the best of my own.

To my knowledge, we never celebrated the DAY anywhere except our house and our one Mammaw's house, and then at my In-Laws home after I married. My first Mother-in-Law would get up at three a.m., even after having boiled the turkey the day before. She almost invariably had Thanksgiving dinner on the table by eleven a.m., so that the deer hunters could be on their way to camp, full of dressing and pie, their camo and John Deere caps disappearing into revving pickups with guns and leftover food, leaving the disheveled, stripped feast table to us stay-behinds and the relief that comes after hard work, a swift, rowdy meal and the departure of enough preposterone to fill a stadium.

My MIL was a FINE cook---Miss Emma could get in that kitchen WAY before daylight, crank up that shiny white stove, and turn out pans of biscuits, ham and bacon and eggs, grits and home-canned jams and jellies and preserves, just to get the farmers into the fields. They usually came home for noon dinner, and it was a hot meal, fried chicken or pork chops, meat-laden spaghetti dishes, several dishes of beans or corn or potatoes, with a hot bread coming out of that oven, steaming and crusty, at every meal.

I just knew she must long for a graceful moment, a little corner of respite from the cooking and laundry and all those rough garments bustling through the door with whoops and appetites and elbows. She DID have the little peace of quiet afternoons, the time right after the noon dishes were done, the dishrag wrung and hung, the floor swept. A bath in that huge old clawfoot tub, her hair up in a little terrycloth band, a fresh outfit from her closet, and she had a little time to regroup and gain peace.

Everyone worked hard, ate heartily, and the day-to-day labor of it, running those planters and tractors and cotton pickers, spending nights lugging the irrigation pipes from field to field, working in the midnight dust-haze, the bright beam of combine lights cutting the hazy darkness like alien ships as they waited for the plates of heavy sandwiches and pie to sustain until breakfast---so farmers passed the days.

One year our farm planted many acres of okra; the contractors came in and picked it, and when they finished, all the rest of the season was ours, and we had okra to give away for miles. A neighbor usually contracted with a bean company to raise bush beans, another for cucumbers and those contractors picked ONCE only, mowing at those bushes like our combines stripped the soybeans. We were then invited into the flattened fields and harvested whole winters' worth of beans for the freezerm and cucumbers enough to satisfy Heinz.

But the best part was the farmer who grew potatoes. He'd say, "They'll be here on Monday," and we knew that by Wednesday, the churned-up fields would be ours to share. We'd take lugs and tubs and baskets, and rootle around in that turned-earth for the pinky-brown potatoes. My children treated it with the delight of an Easter Egg hunt, gathering and digging and grabbing with shouts of discovery and whoops of victory when a particularly immense one was unearthed.

Those were just a few days a year, and not hard work, but it was so nice to have all those good vegetables just handed to us, and the canned and frozen bounty was like riches to look at, stored in cabinets and storerooms and under beds and in tidy rows up the attic stairs. The potatoes went onto racks and planks and old screendoors set onto sawhorses under the no-longer-in-use egg sheds, to dry from the wet earth so we could store them inside the storehouse.

And our own garden covered a good three acres, including the corn patch and the watermelon and cantaloupe patches. We were blessed with great stores of foodstuffs for the winter days, and I could not IMAGINE the people who had to cook straight out of the grocery store.

Our Thanksgiving table held the work of our own hands, sometimes a fresh-shot wild turkey from our woods, and the corn and beans and sweet potatoes, potatoes and peas and turnips and greens; our peach and apple and cherry trees had borne bushels, to be frozen or canned and to go into desserts all year. Our one persimmon tree, little golden lanterns dangling in the sunset, was just for PRETTY, for no one liked the fruit very much, but the bowl on the dining table was like a ray of light.

The pecan orchard is well-grown now, from the time that my boys and their Great Grandfather planted it, laying out the plotting with stobs and string, setting those strong young trees into a grid that marched straight in whatever direction you looked.

And I'm just as thankful now, for a loaf from Caro's bakery, for the store-bought produce from lands I can't imagine, for the ease of self-rising and the convenience of Pillsbury. We put together a tableful of the old foods, some cooked in new ways, all tasting of the THEN, blessed by the work of our hands and of those we'll never know. And we bow for the Blessing, break into a hot, buttery roll, taste the old familiar tang of cranberry and the rich, redolent steam of gravy, and we ARE blessed.

And thankful we were. We were farm people, of the land, though I had been raised in the little town a few miles distant. Our living depended on the rain and the soil, and I think having to work and pray hard for your livelihood makes you ever so much more grateful for whatever you ARE granted.

[racheld]

I missed our family Thanksgiving this year due to a viral thingy..I feel like I just had Thanksgiving because of your blog..and it was one of the best ever! Thank you for your Southern hospitality!

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You're just WELCOME!!! I'm glad you're all better and can enjoy it.

[prasantrin]

This has been such a beautiful blog--visually and spiritually. Thank you for sharing your Thanksgiving with us (what a spread!), and the rest of your week, too!

And if you ever publish Fairy Tea with those beautiful pictures, please please let me know. I'd buy it in a heartbeat!

[Susan in FL]

I missed our family Thanksgiving this year due to a viral thingy..I feel like I just had Thanksgiving because of your blog..and it was one of the best ever! Thank you for your Southern hospitality!

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I missed hosting a Thanksgiving feast or going to anybody's home this year, too. With my job change back to full time, I wasn't able to take The Day After off work and so I couldn't accept invitations from family who are all up north. Rachel, you filled the hole I felt and following your blog made me feel like I had a real Thanksgiving as well. You've inspired me for Christmas... They are all coming to me over the holidays, and I am cooking, for sure!

This has been such a beautiful blog--visually and spiritually.

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So well put.

[racheld]

We're about to be out and about, pillaging markets and seeing one more bakery, within aroma distance of our back door. We don't go SHOP on the day after Thanksgiving, but today will be a little tour of some more places we like to go--an Asian market or two, for some good fresh GREENS after all those carbs and for just getting out into this glorious sunshine. We could not have ordered a week of better weather for the holiday.

But first, COFFEE, as I have it every morning, S&L and skim. It makes me human in just a few sips, and I love the throaty little chuckle as my little pot leans to pour:

And breakfast, the pastries brought from work by Caro, still warm:

I keep meaning to ask how they make that rectangular one look as if it's turned inside out---the little stretch-marks take on a wonderful crispness around that soft, yeasty interior. The others are twists and two raspberry-filled for Chris.

And we shared:

Soft scrambled eggs laid over slices of provolone on rye; the melting and melding was amazing. But this has been a heavy-food weekend, and I could only bite the tip off one of the twists, after that half sandwich. Shoulda had a yogurt.

I missed showing our distinctive skyline building; we were riding around after going to Shapiro's the other night, and Chris would stop, I'd hop out with the camera, and hope to catch something on that lovely clear night.

This is the tallest building we have, from whose windows I showed the War Memorial in the teaser photo last week.

Where he stopped the car, I just had to walk a little bit to sort of line up three of the downtown landmarks, though they are blocks apart: The tall building, which at night with the roof lit, reminds me of stadium seats, lit brightly and rising to a point in the sky; the War Memorial, with its pyramid lost in the darkness at the top, and the obelisk in the park.

One of the guesses pointed out the War Memorial to be the same style building as the Scottish Rite Temple in Washington. This is our OWN Scottish Rite Temple, which won an award for best architecture of the year when it was built. When it's all lit up at night, it's an immense wedding cake with towers and swoops.

Ours is more Wren-ish, I think. It's beautiful.

Chris is feeling fine, and is off to a camera show. Caro and I are going out for green stuff.

moire non

Edited November 26, 2006 by racheld (log)

[Chufi]

Thanks you Rachel, for giving me, on the other side of the planet, the experience of a real Thanksgiving. I wish I could have tasted your food.. but your words are almost as good!

[racheld]

Okay. We do NOT have yeast in our blood. It just seems so this week, in that we've trekked you through enough baked goods to supply a small country, and they are all just SO beautiful. This last one is the one I was planning to do originally, because it's within smell-the-fragrance distance down the street, and their stuff is delicious.

The Nautilus shells are so pretty, as are the matching scallops:

However, I couldn't miss this: We walked into the local bakery, Panaderia las Americas, and asked if we might photograph their lovely wares. We were passed from hand to hand, each saying that they would have to see, and finally were just handed a cell phone, on which I spoke to the owner. He needed a lengthy explanation of WHY and what I was doing and perhaps if I could just repeat that. I explained that he’s less than three blocks from I-465, EASY to find, and there are streams of thousands of cars going by every day, never knowing how close they are to those wonderful baked goods.

I also said we had thousands of Internet members, and he said “How much?” It seems that two young men had offered to “Put him on the Net” several months ago, but wanted $800 to do so. So he was persuaded, and we proceeded to make pictures. Or, rather I did; Caro picked up a pan from the stack and a pair of tongs, and selected quite a few items for supper dessert. Busman’s Holiday, if anyone remembers that phrase.

And so we filled our tray, not for the hunger of it, but for the sheer variety and the new experience of some of the items. And who can resist a rubber duckie, even a baked one?

When the word spread through the store and kitchen that we were allowed to make photos, Magic happened. Doors were opened, partitions in the display areas slid aside, and great trays of fresh items brought proudly forth from the back rooms.

Every time I wandered off to another display, Javier came out of the kitchen with another fresh tray:

The diamond-incised bread was Heavenly---rich and moist and vanilla-flavored, like a not-too-sweet cake layer, and the rivulets of vanilla atop, almost like a crème anglaise, are delicious.

Delicious on-a-mold baked horns, with a creamy center:

These are like more-elegant little religeuses, with a jauntier wardrobe:

They treated us royally, and we had a lovely time. One young woman looked at my camera view and wrote down names of things, by the numbers on the camera---little did I realize that those don’t apply after you actually take the card OUT of the camera. But everything was magnificent, just a teensy bit less sweet than our doughnut-accustomed palates have come to expect. This is what we brought home:

We were stunned to learn that the grand total was less than eight dollars.

This was a glorious afternoon, with meanderings and lookings, buying of baked goods, of greens, of spices and condiments to feed our tastes for the salty, the crisply fresh, the sizzled-with-garlic. No more butter-laden casseroles for a while, not til Winter sets in or Christmas Dinner comes. We will, however be having a fishfry tonight; Son promised me a get-out-the-black-pot real downhome fishfry, and I've got to get to work on the slaw and tartar sauce.

So, one more foray into the richness of fish and hushpuppies and fried potatoes, with several sauces and wedges of lemon to offset the scent. I'd better get going at that, and will post the supper pictures later.

moire non

[Sentiamo]

Ahhh Rachel, you have forced me out of my blog lurking habit! What a wonderful journey for this Antipodean. I concur with every other eGulleter who has swooned at your exquisite word magic and accompanying pics...I believe I have actually lost weight this week as I swear the only food I have eaten is what you photographed!! I was sated.

It is unfortunate that here in New Zealand we have no traditional themed food day other than Christmas and that olde English traditional meal is dying a quick death also. Mostly, this is due to our love of the BBQ so a turkey/hot ham/plum pudding dinner is fast being replaced with chargrilled food that can be served with lots of wonderful salads and enjoyed under our December summer sun.

So, I envy you all who get to eat your turkey when it is ( mostly!) cold where you are! Heck, we now have midwinter Christmas dinners just so we CAN justify eating all of your kinda Thanksgiving food when it is brass monkey weather.

Thank you so much for this trip, it has been a joy to go on and I am much enlightened. Your faerie story has been duly copied and will make its way into my precious granddaughter Alexandra's cache of most beloved wee stories/prose for sure!

You are an eGullet treasure.

[racheld]

What a lovely post!! I've been wondering where you were---that furry debauch of a cat is memorable, and I've missed him/her. We seem to have quite a few members from the Downs Under. (Is that still politically correct? I can't keep up).

We now have all sorts of greens and condiments and some fruit and all kinds of goodies which are NOT turkey. That's the good part.

Asian market yielded these nice supplies:

The makings of a good many bowls of Pho as the weather chills this week; noodles, snow peas, bean sprouts, limes, some lovely little already-fried shallots, and some raw water chestnuts and ginger, with a couple of shiny pomegranates for dessert.

They are on the counter in the upstairs kitchen, where the loud bird and the crockpot live, and savory broths are born.

These greens are snugged away to stay crisp and green in the fridge:

Baby bok choy, some kind of spinach-type greens, some pale ones that we cook like Savoy, and long beans.

We also picked up a new kind of soy sauce and some really pretty tapioca, just for the novelty of it---it's strange; the colored ones are odorless, and the white pearls smell like fruit. A bottle of vinegar, some jasmine tea, and a can of something I cannot remember---perhaps lychees for Chris, who grew to like them when we met and befriended a young doctor who was born in Viet Nam. He and his family were on one of the last boats out, and all the siblings finished medical school. He was a member of the National Guard during Desert Storm, and was sent here to give soldiers their medical checkups when they returned home. He sort of got stuck here for longer than he thought, for they didn't send a replacement for quite some time.

He missed his home and family in Ohio, and loved to come and have dinner at our house. He would bring a jar of lychees, a box of bean paste candy in fanciful shapes and colors, or a small cake, almost jelly in consistency, covered in coconut or chopped nuts.

I love the look on the baby bok choy faces, as they cuddle up like piggies to their mama:

And the grace with which they compose themselves:

The icy coldness of water from the faucet keeps the leaves crisp and fresh. They will be bagged with paper towels, and used tomorrow.

Just the words "crisp" and "fresh" are enticing, somehow, after this week of preparing and eating so much rich food. A simple broth with a little lime, a few snow peas dropped into the bowl to turn bright green, a few crispy bean sprouts---that sounds like the lunch we've been needing.

Perhaps tomorrow, I'll finally get the time to show some of the "Goodwill" which featured in the title.

And that fishfry. We wanted it in nice weather, and we got it. Couldn't press our luck much longer.

And I'll bid you all good night, and a bright day tomorrow.

moire non

[Pan]

Rachel, I love how you make both down-home American cooking and East Asian cooking. Have you cooked Chinese and Vietnamese food?

[racheld]

Caro does most of the Chinese cooking---she's hooked on Ah Leung's tutorials, and will stir up a dish as soon as she arrives home in the early morning. And you'd be surprised how you get to CRAVING Ma Po Tofu for breakfast. Somewhere back in this thread, I think there's a step-by-step featuring her at the battered old pan. She does Pho and a couple of things that include some Vietnamese condiments and sauces, and just today brought home a bright, hefty book with LOTS of good wok-type dishes.

I've said here before that we probably had the first wok in our area that did not belong to an Asian family---we were doing stir-frys and all sorts of dumplings and sauces YEARS ago, making satays and other goodies on sticks way before anyone WE knew would even eat it, let alone cook it.

She's a fantastic cook, and I'm a really good chopper. I just love a good knife, and my two favorites look like a cross between a chef's knife and a cleaver, and keep a SHARP little keen blade.

And we all love pad thai, though that's the only Thai dish that we make, except for duplicating the curry chicken at a place we like, though I don't have a clue of the authenticity.

I just chimed back in to say: Please remember to tune in---I promised Chef I'd remind you all---he thinks this site is just amazing.

ETA: To find the Heidelberg Cafe, take I-465 to Exit 42, Pendleton Pike. Go East and get ready to make an immediate right turn into the parking lot.

Good Night.

Edited November 26, 2006 by racheld (log)

[Pan]

Rachel, somehow, I've lost track of who Caro is. A daughter?

[racheld]

Rachel, somehow, I've lost track of who Caro is. A daughter?

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Yes---it got lengthy referring to her as Daughter in so many posts. She's newly-registered eGullet member caroled, of few posts, but great cooking and baking talent.

[hzrt8w]

The icy coldness of water from the faucet keeps the leaves crisp and fresh.  They will be bagged with paper towels, and used tomorrow.

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Rachel: I believe what's in this picture (with 80% certainty), the spinach-like vegetable, is what Cantonese call "Saan Choy". The word "Saan" describes the slightly slimmy taste of the stem once cooked. My father and I both like this vegetable, but most Americans that I know are not used to it.

Edited November 26, 2006 by hzrt8w (log)

[Rebecca263]

Hello, Rachel! I'm late, I'm late! Hello, I've come online today JUST to read your week of words...and now I must go to the beginning of the blog, and attempt a short bit of catch up...

[dockhl]

rachel~

I feel really stupid for asking 'cause I must have missed it somewhere.......

what CITY have we been looking at? I don't exactly know where you are

Blog on..........

Kathy

[racheld]

Our evening involved MORE cooking, but with the bulk of the work done outdoors, by Son#2, who had promised that we'd do a home-style fishfry before we let the black pot retire for the Winter.

We couldn't have picked a better day/evening---it was lovely weather and we had a nice dinner together (despite my not caring for fish AT ALL, and my great gratitude extended to there being no residual fish-frying odors in the house when I awoke this morning.

We started with mango daiquiris, made by Chris, with a mix and then a littla this, littla that. Quite tasty, and equally sneaky---the sweetish, fruity smoothie kinda snuck up on you.

They had oysters as a starter, whilst all the work was going on:

My children learned to like oysters early, from the time they were just toddlers, and their Grandfather would come back from the coast with several coolers. He'd stride into the house, disheveled from the long ride, and odorous of the several days on a deep-sea fishing trip, and thump down big old croaker-sacks of the briny marvels.

Everybody would set to, working those little oyster-openers like magic, but never leaving them half-shell---there were too many waiting mouths and hungry diners. The meats were scoop/scraped into bowls, with the liquor, and passed on to whoever was holding an eager fork, poised for the spearing, the dip into the cocktail sauce, and a quick slurp of satisfaction.

One uncle insisted on seating each oyster atop a "soda cracker" before dabbing the top with a little sauce, then working that cracker like a puzzle piece between his lips. I was the sauce-maker, and learned who liked it hot, who needed an extra hit of horseradish, who would like a lot of lemon.

All this activity was usually going on out in the backyard, with gatherings of hunting dogs and sometimes a pet duck or two, happy to wait endlessly for a chance at a taste. Inside, the skillets were going, three on the stove---two with fish and one with hushpuppies. The odd pan was a still-silvery old battered Wearever Dutch oven, the plastic handles just burned-away nubs from all the oven-use. This pan was the potato pan, and required several "fryings" to turn out enough fries for the crowd. It was filled several times with Maw's special recipe for French fries.

She cut the potatoes into fry-sized pieces, threw them into cold water, drained them, and then dumped a handful of flour on top. A scatter of salt, pepper, maybe a shake of powdered garlic, a toss and toss with two big spoons, til the flour was wet and clumpy and sticking to the potatoes, and into the sizzling oil. They came out crisp and flavorful and covered with little clinging crispins which were just delightful to crunch.

This time, I did not batter the fries; time snuck up on me whilst I was cutting the cabbage for the slaw, and since he called for "potatoes first" I missed the boat.

There's an order to the cooking---fries first, to satisfy nibblers; then the fish, which takes the most time, then the hushpuppies, which come out hot and crisp and fragrant, just as you're ready to sit down.

Potatoes in:

You have to be careful leaning over the pot---it will steam up your camera lens something awful.

Fish Dive!!

And then the hushpuppies go in. Not long now.

HAND OVER THE HUSHPUPPIES AND NO ONE GETS HURT!!

Checking the fish to see if it's ready---not quite brown enough.

Maddy doing her famous Taylor-Turn for a bite:

At LAST!! Mississippi-raised catfish, cooked whole with the tails on---Chris' special treat. Everybody snaps the tails off theirs and gives them to him, and he crunches away happily. Fried potatoes, hushpuppies, and some crappie filets, brought back from Son's last trip South---caught in one of their favorite fishing spots.

Everybody to the table. I've done my little part---Blue Slaw, with a little grated carrot, cider vinegar, a touch of sugar, salt, and celery seeds:

Tartar sauce---mayo, grated homemade dill pickles, minced sweet onion, a bit of the salty brine from the pickle jar.

Plate:

They really enjoyed it, and I'm just thankful for a glass tabletop and lots of paper towels.