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Just as Halloween signals fall, Thanksgiving is the beginning of Foodfest, the period from Thanksgiving through Super Bowl Sunday when huge quantities of fat-laden and sugar-infused food are offered and consumed.
Most other special occasions can be celebrated without too much damage as they last only one day, but Foodfest lasts longer than Lent.
It’s rare when we don’t cook at home. My husband loves to cook and so do I, or so I have been told. Friends and family love his cooking and request certain dishes. He recently made sauerkraut for 100 people for our church fall festival, because they prefer his recipe. Well, of course they love his cooking. They love it even if they loathe sauerkraut. This is because he has learned the secret of all great chefs: bacon, butter, gravy, cheese, and sugar. You can make anything taste good if you use one of these tricks. A synopsis of his kraut recipe is: 8 slices of bacon, chopped and fried;
Chopped onions, chopped and fried in bacon grease; Some sauerkraut (not too much, as you don’t want it to be too healthy); Brown sugar; 5 pounds country style ribs; 2 pounds smoked sausage; 1 cup wine, optional; Dried onion, caraway seed, bay leaves I served for an hour, and people came back for second and third helpings. They were kraut-crazed. That brings me to past Thanksgivings. I work for two days menu-planning, shopping, chopping, dicing, slicing, table-setting, and cooking. Before cooking the turkey, I remove the giblets to simmer them with seasonings and vegetables to make a beautiful base for the gravy. Then the Head Chef waltzes in about an hour before dinner and makes the gravy, which is all that is really required for a successful Thanksgiving dinner at our house. It matters not that I cooked for two days to lovingly lay out roast turkey, fluffy homemade-mashed potatoes, delicious stuffing, green bean casserole and other culinary delights, because the only words uttered about the meal are “Mmm, good gravy.” Gravy is heaped onto every dish, covering the fruits of my labor so they are indistinct from one another. One cannot discern a green bean from a cranberry since it is all gravy-laden. Of course, more gravy must be applied during dinner when it starts to disappear from the plate and actual food begins to show through. I gave up trying new recipes at Thanksgiving long ago, as it is a time-tested fact that my dishes are, at best, gravy receptacles. After 31 years, I now realize our Thanksgiving dinner is all about the gravy. It is my job to provide the best darn gravy holders possible. Jill Walczak lives with her husband, two dogs and five cats in Aledo. They own a construction-materials testing and engineering laboratory. |
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