Thanksgiving Menu

With Thanksgiving fast approaching, it’s time to start planning the menu. Many folks will cook the standard fare—turkey, dressing, green bean casserole, sweet potato casserole, potato salad, pies, cakes. Some will use the more modern approach and use some new fangle, plant-based recipes like soybean turkey and kale salad.

When in doubt, I refer to my favorite cookbook, the 811 page, 1961 edition of Amy Vanderbilt’s Complete Cookbook with illustrations by one Andrew Warhol who would go from pen and ink drawings of spoons and place settings in this cookbook to painting Marilyn Monroe and Campbell Soup cans.

Ms. Vanderbilt prepares the novice cook to prepare a feast down to where to place the shrimp fork.

For her Thanksgiving dinner, she suggests appetizers of celery hearts, olives, radishes and small cheese canapes. Afterwards, the entree is roast turkey with favorite stuffings (apricot, corn-bread, fruit-nut, oyster, rice-almond, or sausage), sweetbread and oyster pie (please call the heart specialist before consuming), hashed-browned potatoes prepared with bacon fat, broccoli with hollandaise (more fat), hot rolls and cranberry jelly. And finally for dessert, tipsy peaches made with cognac, pumpkin pie, and ice cream. Now you’re talking.

And just where is the Jello mold salad made with a plethora of ingredients, your choice, tuna fish, cottage cheese, sauerkraut, green olives, mandarin oranges, boiled eggs, cucumber, etc. etc. etc. Southerners prefer their favorites either the green Watergate salad or the orange one.

But, it ain’t Thanksgiving until we hear that familiar sucking sound as the cranberry sauce slides out of the can and don’t forget Nana’s pickled peaches and Mamaw’s leaf lettuce with pineapple slice garnished with a dollop of mayonnaise. Yum. Yum..