This is a Thanksgiving guest post from my dear sister! It’s foodie fiction! Emphasis on fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental. I’m certainly not one of these characters. Neither are you. Please to enjoy!

A Thanksgiving Story
by Helen Morille

Dear Diary,
When you’re fourteen and surrounded by a pack of genuine nutjobs, it’s tricky to find the spirit of thanksgiving. Don’t get me wrong, I’m thankful for all the things that keep me from sounding like an entitled princess (one can hope), but I’ve grown weary with disenchantment when faced with the prospect of the big family dinner.

My mother’s cooking isn’t necessarily the problem; she grew up watching Two Fat Ladies with her less-crazy sister, my aunt Clementine, but she only managed to commit to memory the episode where the fat ladies hollowed out a loaf of crusty bread only to fill it up again with meat, peas, and potatoes, so most of her weeknight recipes are charmingly breaded. Don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean Panko-crusted and stuffed with goat cheese, beloved by all. I mean my mom literally “breads” the ever-loving shit out of everything. It’s a verb, an act of sensual cocoonery that happens to the most benign and unsuspecting of meals. Last night we ate chili and cornbread…in a loaf of actual bread. If you’re picturing a layer of cornbread, a layer of chili, a layer of grated cheddar, then layers of finely chopped red onion and sour cream, all packed inside a country white loaf, you’re spot on. Now I know my mom is on the “add a pound a butter” side of the cooking spectrum–her King Ranch Chicken casserole recipe is from an old eighties Barbara Bush recipe book (we live in Texas but my parents are as liberal as the day is long, with the exception of this one piece of political contraband), but what on earth would possess her to put cornbread and actual bread together in one dish? The tragic part is, no matter what she puts in the bread loaf, she fully expects to be able to slice it perfectly, and is fully devastated when she pokes it gently with a knife and the walls give way like the over done turkey in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, leaving a mass of chili wad and soggy bread in the center of the table (at which point my father hands us each a long handled ice tea spoon and we all prod at the poor thing lying spread eagle, guts spilled on the center of the table).

We were all excited when my mom announced that she’d decided not to give our thanksgiving dinner its breaded winter coat, but the excitement was short lived when she announced her alternative: Turkey Everything! The exclamation point was hers, not mine, I’m afraid. I’m a sullen teenager; I fancy myself a happy medium between Hermione Granger and Wednesday Addams, so I just looked over the top of The Speech: A Historic Filibuster On Corporate Greed and the Decline of Our Middle Class and asked, “please mom, why and what is turkey everything?” Her enthusiasm rivaled a lottery winner describing the events leading up to buying their winning ticket–she relished every detail, which started at the obvious: “the turkey is just turkey! But then the stuffing is going to be a creamy gizzard bread pudding topped with a turkey schmaltz crumble! And then there’s the cranberry and turkey aspic, turkey neck stock mashed potatoes, and turkey chunk biscuits, and pumpkin pie with a turkey skin gribene crust!” Gribenes! I had to google it! Until the “Turkey Everything!” speech, the only Yiddish word my mom ever used was schmuck.

So, Turkey Everything! Okay. It’s weird and sure to land us in actual tryptophan comas for several days, but we live in the country and literally have nothing better to do after Thanksgiving, unless you like perusing the latest Seth Rogan blu ray offerings for two hours at our local ye olde electronics mart with my dad on Black Friday.

Aunt Clementine will arrive with her own seventeen gourmet dishes of cheese-stuffed fried olives, butter-rubbed roasted mushrooms with dates and candied bourbon pecans, and individual sweet potato gratins topped with Gruyere and crispy lardon, and it will offset the 1960’s turkey jello mold catastrophe that will be my mother’s festive spread.

No, the real trouble is my other aunt, Dorothy. Her name is adorable– she doesn’t deserve it, mainly because she rejected it in favor of forcing all of us to call her Meadow Breeze Kisses. I told her it sounded like a chocolate company decided to do cross promotions with an air freshener company. Without a word, my dad gave me five dollars on the spot and my mom was also pleased because MBK is that despicable breed of crunchy fake zen yogi master that judges all foods that aren’t chia or kale while maintaining the most frigid and uptight demeanor. She and her husband, who is an undeniable asshole, an expert in all things with a bit of an elbow problem, have a daughter named Rain, who, despite potty training at four months old (“isn’t she ahhmazing?! It’s the sign language!”) asserts her dominance by peeing on sofas and arm chairs whenever she doesn’t get her way.

Last year, MBK brought yeast soaked, sprouted chia seeds as a “savory dippy to go with kale chips! Don’t you have any kale chips? How tragic, no kale chips!” She then lectured me all through dinner about “releasing my yoni so my Crimson Moon could finally arrive,” followed by rigorous harassment about whether or not the Honey Crisp apples in my mom’s breaded apple pie were GMO free. Finally, mom shouted that MBK could take her GMO and eat a DIK (she gets flustered when angry and her acronyms suffer, but we all appreciated the effort). Rain peed on her chair at the table from lack of undivided attention, and then out came the worst of Meadow Breeze Kisses–her signature catchphrase. When MBK gets upset, rather than feel actual feelings, she suppresses everything, and instead shrieks a high pitched, terrifying sing-songy catchphrase, “PEACE AND LOVE, Peaaaaaace and Luhhhhhhhuvvvvvv!!!!!!” It is, without a doubt, the worst sound.
…
So, I just asked my mom, “why do we have to invite Meadow and the Chia Seed Tequila Pee-ers to thanksgiving every year?” Dad was in the room and heard my question, so five more points to Gryffindor (five more bucks for me)! He’s a writer, like me, so it literally pays to be witty ’round these parts.

Because, my mom said, because they remind us to be thankful that our own little family is together and happy; that we’re well fed, and full of love despite our flaws. That even with all our neuroses and in our low blood sugar-induced hangry rants before Turkey Everything! is laid out, we are thankful that we have each other, and that our people love us when we need it the most.

“But,” she added, “Meadow just called and has opted to not attend thanksgiving with us this year because I refused to crank the heat up to turn the house into what she called a ‘much-needed sweat lodge to detox the excess calories that will clog up our Chi.’ I told her we live in Texas and there’s not a whore’s chance in heaven that I have any desire to sweat prior to my meat sweats–save it for the turkey, sister!”

It’s a Thanksgiving Turkey Everything miracle.

Love,
Josephine

I’ve fallen into a pattern where I use this opening paragraph to complain about whatever I’m worried about at the moment. I started to do it again today, but in the spirit of thanksgiving, I deleted all my minor quibbles and I’m gonna be positive instead, dammit! We are still screen free, which means we’ve made it almost two weeks. Everyone is happier and more productive, except for maybe me (on the productive side, I mean, I am happier). I spend a lot of time reading books, some good (The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe) some exhaustingly bad (The Berenstain Bears No Girls Allowed– that book is super duper sexist, all while trying to be really progressive, which somehow makes it worse) and facilitating the kids’ project ideas, which is a nice change from the constant negotiating about how much more television they can watch, but which means that I’ve lost the screen-time babysitter that I used to use to get stuff done. I think as we go farther down this road the kids will get more accustomed to working and playing without my help, and we’ll be able to find a balance in our daily activities where there is time for my projects too. Have I somehow slipped back into my complaining pattern? Yeah. We had a glorious week- good food shared with friends and family, and a perfect camping trip laden with terrible food choices. Here’s what it looked like.

Broccoli Soup with Lemon and Parmesan. It’s a big pot of soup, y’all. I used the right amount of broccoli this time so it was creamy and rich instead of watery and flavorless. I didn’t have any chicken stock though, so I made a parmesan broth with leftover rinds I’ve been stockpiling in the freezer and it works really well in this application.

Potluck Dinner: Broccoli Soup, Challah, Sweet Potatoes with Coconut,  Pomegranate and Lime, Green Salad with Aged Cheddar, Avocado, and Lots of Other Stuff. Helen and her family and Molly and Dustin joined us for a potluck on Monday, just because. I wish we could eat every meal like this. It feels like a celebration, but it’s so easy. I made soup and challah. Oh, and I gave that challah the 24 hour rest the recipe calls for for the first time and guess what? It tastes just about the same as the bread without a rest! So I won’t feel guilty for skipping that step from now on. Molly made a beautiful smashed sweet potato dish with coconut flakes, coconut milk, pomegranate seeds, lime, and cilantro. It was glorious. Helen made a big salad with everything in it- huge generous wedges of avocado, little cubes of cheddar, dried cherries, nuts, and a dressing I’m obsessed with. Brianna’s Ginger Mandarin- it’s store bought, but exceptionally good. It tastes like sesame oil and ginger and in spite of that goes well with everything you put it on.

Coconut-Lime Pork Tacos, Homemade Tortillas 1.0. I’m obsessed with these tacos. I don’t think there’s a better use for a pound of ground pork.

Vegetable Pakoras, Green Chutney, Coconut Rice. There’s a whole green apple blended up in that chutney! And we cooked the rice in half a can of coconut milk leftover from the coconut-lime pork tacos plus some of the coconut water from a coconut we split our own selves! I tried to crack the thing with the back of a chef’s knife like the pros do but it wasn’t happening, so we just sat on the kitchen floor and bashed the thing with the claw-end of a hammer. We were all splattered with the spray of coconut water, but got the thing open in the end. The pakoras were good, I think. Everyone loved the cauliflower and the butternut squash. I also fried up a beet and nobody liked that but me, and I mostly just liked it because it was another fried thing to put in my mouth.

Apple Muffins. These muffins are everything. You gotta make them. Do you know what’s weird about them though? They smell exactly like the food counter near the checkout at IKEA where they sell 99 cent cinnamon rolls. I know what you’re thinking- that it’s just a cinnamony smell- but there’s something more to it. A sort of new cardboard box smell mixed in. It doesn’t make any sense, but these are the facts and I’m just reporting them to you. We brought these to the potluck dinner on the first night of our camping trip. I’ve brought muffins to nearly every unschooler event I’ve gone to and I like perpetuating the idea that I only feed my family muffins.

We went camping! The boys and I joined 30 other unschooling families in a massive group camp out. We stayed two nights and did all the things- camp fires and s’mores, the boys’ first canoe ride and dance party, and tons of exploration and splashing in trickily waterfalls. We hiked down to a place called the Devil’s Waterhole (compelling name, yes?) and the kids spent an afternoon throwing rocks in the water. Henry ate handfuls of wild mustang grapes growing nearby, the juice dripping all over his neck and belly (and eventually giving him an itchy rash, but let’s not dwell on that!). I always think of camping as an excuse to eat badly. We brought a party-sized bag of Doritos, hot dogs, hamburgers, trail mix with 90% m&ms, squeeze-y tube yogurts, s’mores fixins, and a package of double stuf Oreos that didn’t survive long enough to make it to the camp out. By our second day I felt completely disgusting. Our friend Patches was on the site next to us and generously shared the beautiful cast iron pot filled with crispy rosemary potatoes and pork, and another dish of sauteed zucchini with mushrooms and onions. It was the best thing I’ve ever eaten- I think my body was desperate for a vegetable. I’m totally inspired to ditch the processed food garbage the next time we camp and cook like Patches instead. Yes I will, yes I will. I loved being surrounded by these wonderful families. Groups of kids would come together for impromptu adventures- building dams by a drainage ditch, sharing our one terrible walmart fishing pole and digging for worms and grubs as bait. We didn’t catch anything but we did see a turtle and a heron-y thing, so that was cool. My friends Lindsay and Carla and their families hung out and helped each other the whole time. I never had to light a fire, I got to eat some of Carla’s incredible carrot-cake inspired banana bread for breakfast, and Henry found constant entertainment in Lindsay’s husband Nick, who generously supplied Henry with an endless stream of math problems for Henry to solve around the camp fire. On our last night there, Patches threw a massive dance party for everyone, with a machine that splashed colored lights off the branches of the trees surrounding the campsite and glow sticks for all the kids. Henry and George thought it was the greatest thing ever. The next morning the weather turned cold and a bit rainy, and we packed up and left quickly, but on the drive out of the park Henry said “I will never forget this trip.” It was magical, start to finish. I also felt really close and connected to my kids, and grateful beyond measure to the beautiful new friends we’ve made in the unschooling community. Love abounds.

Pita Pizzas. We were home from the camping trip in time for lunch on Saturday, so we had the opportunity to eat real, unprocessed food, but I just made pita pizzas, because, pizza. We ate better for dinner!

Rosemary Thyme Salt for Dry-Brining a Giant Chicken. While I was driving home, Andy went to the farmers’ market to pick up the massive super-chicken Dewberry Hills Farm sells for the holidays. They’re way cheaper than the heritage turkeys we’ve bought from the market in previous years, which come out sort of stringy and dry no matter how lovingly you prepare them. And they’re way cheaper. I have no idea what this thing weighs, but do know that it’s over 11 pounds because that’s how high my kitchen scale goes up. We’re having a quiet Thanksgiving dinner with my sister Helen and family on Wednesday, and then going down to San Antonio to spend real Thanksgiving with Andy’s extended family. I wanted to host one at my own house because I’m a control freak and want to have all the dishes exactly the way I like them, and I also want all the leftovers and sandwich fixins. I’m making the food52 genius turkey recipe, and the thing is dry-brining in the fridge now.

Roasted Chicken, Crispy Smashed Red Potatoes, Shaved Brussels Sprouts Salad with Red Onion, Lemon, and Pecorino. I needed to cook another chicken too so I could make broth for gravy and stuffing, so we had a simple roast chicken on Saturday night. I have waxed poetic about these crispy smashed potatoes before, and they’re still delightful. I wanted to eat something fresh and green too, so I made this salad, which is maybe even more delicious than the potatoes. You shred brussels sprouts as thinly as you can on a mandoline and then toss them with wisps of red onion that you’ve soaked in water to take some of the sting out, a bright lemony vinaigrette with a generous squeeze of honey, and a ton of shredded salty aged cheese. Together they make a salad that you don’t want to stop eating, that is somehow reminiscent to me of the all-you-can-eat Olive Garden salad, which I haven’t had since I was 12, but I remember loving.

Homemade Tortillas 2.0. A kindly reader, a tortilla muse, tipped me off to this tortilla recipe from Homesick Texan, which uses an insane amount of baking powder and  milk and results in tortillas that are devastatingly tender and pillowy. If you’re familiar, they’re in the camp of Mamacita’s or Taco Cabana’s style tortillas, and Andy was over the moon. They’re definitely better than the brittle crackery ones I had been making, but maybe they’re just a bit too far to the soft and sponge-y side, so I think I might try to make a hybrid of the two recipes. Tortilla science!

Potato, Egg, and Cheese Breakfast Tacos. One of the best things about those crispy smashed potatoes is having leftovers for breakfast tacos the next morning.

Chicken Stew with Biscuits. I kept seeing people post pictures of square biscuits on social media and I would wrinkle up my nose at them- shouldn’t biscuits be round? But then it occurred to me that if you make square biscuits you don’t waste any dough, and you don’t have to re-roll your dough scraps and make tougher and tougher biscuits. So basically, they’re brilliant. I did it this way for my favorite chicken stew to use up some leftover shredded chicken and I came up with 16 biscuits out of a recipe that normally only makes 12, enough to completely fill a 13×9 inch pan. We brought the stew to Andy’s parents house and finished cooking it there- it is so good. And Andy’s mom made a pumpkin cheesecake with a praline top AND cranberry white chocolate oat cookies AND dulce de leche ice cream and I ate all of them.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all! I hope you all enjoy massive superchickens and potluck-y meals and good times with your families and friends. I’ll be back here on Wednesday to share a special guest post from my talented sister- some foodie fiction to get us all in the mood for sharing a big meal with our crazy families. See you then!

This week we have been conducting a great experiment- no screens. Not while the kids are awake anyway (though I’m trying to do only semi-essential stuff after they’re asleep too- with a lenient definition of ‘essential’ that includes a few minutes of scrolling idly through facebook). That means no television, no tablet, no video games in the morning with papa, and no looking-at-my-phone time while the kids do all those things. It has been transformative. We have all been happier. The kids have fought way less, and I feel so much better and more accomplished at the end of the day. Henry pulled out and memorized a multiplication table from 0x0 to 12×12. George has been so much more verbal (we went out to eat at a dive-y Chinese restaurant for dinner tonight and George heard me start to order and chimed in “I’d like some rice and soy sauce, please! Mr. Guy, I’d like some white rice with soy sauce!” The waiter paid him no mind.). We’ve spent long hours at parks, or reading books- Andy is reading us all The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe– or playing board games (which actually isn’t fun because the kids are painfully slow and like to cheat.) The life I pictured I would have before having kids, one with a constant hum of creative activities taking place all around me (family drawing time, knitting something while Andy reads a book aloud, building things, making things) suddenly seems possible again. I had not realized how much our tv and tablet habits had snuffed out, and now that they’re gone I never want them to come back. And there’s the rub. Henry absolutely loves his tablet. Even now, six days into our screen-free experiment, he still talks about Candy Crush every night before he goes to bed. Andy and I thought about letting screens back in in a rigidly-controlled way- 30 minutes a day or something, but I am just feeling like any amount is too much right now. I know the kids are happier this way, but I hate to take away their power to choose how they spend their time. But I’m going to. Here’s what we ate this week.

Bulgogi Venison Jerky. My mother-in-law gave us a ton of venison and I’ve been taking full advantage of having a stocked freezer. 4 of the 7 things I’m blogging about this week have the stuff in it. This jerky was made with two crazy cuts that I didn’t know what else to do with- a shoulder steak and a deer ham steak(?). You slice your meat up thinly (easiest if it’s partially frozen), marinate it in a beautiful bath of soy sauce, pear nectar (a tenderizer), ginger, garlic, sesame oil, all that good stuff, and then dry it on a wire rack set over a cookie sheet for four hours in a low oven. It comes out tender and flavorful and it’s all gone now, dammit.

Side note: said mother-in-law is performing in Emily Ann Theatre’s production of To Kill a Mockingbird. We got to see it today and it is such a gorgeous show- the cast is stunning- and it’s done in the round, which is my favorite. It’s playing for one more weekend! Don’t miss the chance to weep openly in front of your fellow theatre-goers and to see my MIL be hilariously hateful (she plays the crotchety old lady Jem reads to, if you’re familiar. I myself had forgotten the entire story until seeing this performance today).

Venison Chili. I don’t use a recipe when I make chili. I briefly considered typing up a guideline of what I do here, but then I thought that would be boring. Does anyone want to read about how I half-ass a chili based on whatever happens to be lying around? I’m betting no. I do have one hot tip though- in lieu of a spoon I eat the whole bowlful by scooping the stuff up with tortilla chips, thick ones. I know this isn’t a new idea but I’m throwing it out there in case you forgot you could do that, because you really should do that. Also because I have nothing else to say and it padded out this paragraph nicely.

Old-School Swedish Meatballs with Mashed Potatoes and Raspberry Jam. Welp, it’s finally happened. I don’t have a picture of one of the dinners we ate this week. Except! I am certain that I remember taking a picture of this dinner. I had four meatballs all in a row, and a lot of fluffy mashed potatoes, which I made a big crater in with the serving spoon, and I poured gravy in the crater and it ran down the sides of potatoes and lapped against the sides of the meatballs in a most appealing way. And I had a tiny bit of raspberry jam on the plate too. I am blameless in all things, so in searching for someone else to blame for my missing picture I’m pointing at two equally-plausible possibilities.  George did it. Because he’s a baby and does stuff like that. Or my phone did it when I finally updated to the new OS later in the week. It just deleted that one. That is a real thing that can happen. I believe this to be true. Anyway, I drew you a picture to help you visualize the four meatballs and the gravy and the potatoes and the jam. You’re welcome, world.

Spaghetti Squash and Bean Tacos with Homemade Flour Tortillas. Smitten Kitchen has a recipe for tacos like this in her cookbook- she makes a sort of cumin/chile pepper/lime thing to dress the shredded squash- but I didn’t feel like doing all that so I just served the stuff with lime wedges and guacamole and figured that’s all anyone would care to taste anyway. It was fine. The tortillas though! I have been resisting the urge to buy them because Make the Bread, Buy the Butter taught me that they are really so easy and cheap to make. And I like them better too, the rough edges and the deeper char and the floury taste. But the texture has seemed a little off from the ones we’re used to- a bit too stiff and cracker like. So this time I doubled the salt (salt!) and added 1/4 teaspoon of baking powder and oh how I loved them! They were noticeably softer, more pillowy and pliable, and more flavorful too. I think it’s not traditional? But I will always add a little bit of baking powder from now on.

Butternut Galette with Onions, Pecans, and Blue Cheese, Tangled Collard Greens. A friend brought up the subject of bloggers who you feel like you’re friends with simply by reading their blog. I feel this way about Tipsy Baker (she’s funny! with a lot of snark) and Ben and Birdy (also funny! with a delightful family dynamic that I aspire to replicate). I was searching food52 for butternut recipes and this one popped up, and I thought it sounded good, and it turns out it’s a recipe by the Ben and Birdy blogger! In fact, it’s the only one she’s ever uploaded to the site. Because I have a lady-crush on her and because I thought the flavors sounded so lovely together, I made it. It was easy and I loved it. I was kind of the only one though. The kids weren’t interested at all. Andy ate without complaint but when I asked him what he thought, he said that he doesn’t really like butternut squash or blue cheese so eating them together wasn’t his very favorite thing. I think they’re all nuts. The squash was completely delicious with the musty cheese. And the onions are roasted and then tossed in balsamic vinegar, which added a fruity tang, and the dough is flaky and rich with sour cream, and also pecans! These are all great things that taste great together. Let me know if you agree so I can eat it with you, because I probably won’t make it for my family again- the ingrates!

Pepperoni Pizzas. Aggghhh. So, at the Texas Book Festival, one of the cookbook authors talked about how fun it would be for you to ‘cook this with your kids!’. People are always saying this. Lots of people who don’t have kids. Or who have their shit way more together than I do. This picture, dear readers, is an accurate visual representation of what it’s actually like to cook with kids. George and Henry ‘helped’ me make the pizza on the left (which looks like an upside-down pizza voodoo doll, yes?). They smeared their spoons full of sauce into the dough and tore holes in it. The sauce soaked through the holes to the flour below, that was there to prevent the dough from sticking to the countertop, so stick it did. To the counter, and then to the pizza peel, and then to the pizza stone, where the cheese also melted through the hole and glued the thing to the stone. I had to scrape desperately at it with a metal spatula, and open up all the windows and turn on the fans to try to prevent the smoke alarm from going off because it terrifies Henry. The reality was so far from the fun-mom-cooking-with-kids Friday night project I had envisioned. I felt stressed and sweaty when we sat down to eat these, and guilty too for getting frustrated that a 2 and 4 year old couldn’t make a perfect pizza. Do you know what though? The voodoo pizza fellow tasted delicious. Every bit as good as the pretty(ier) one on the right. Maybe even better because I really loved that charred pepperoni and the crusty cheese bits. So what’s the moral? I don’t know. Be less bossy and try to sit back and enjoy the flavor of the ruined pizza, maybe.

Old-School Baked Ziti. How weird is it that I cooked two dishes that are described as “Old-School” this week? Looking back through the week I see I must have been craving comfort foods when I planned the menu, as we ate mostly meat and carbs and nothing green. This is that rare sort of dish that makes a ton, but that you also want to eat all of. We had it for dinner last night and then lunch today and that, save one extra portion that Andy’s taking for lunch tomorrow, wiped it out. It’s supposed to have a few handfuls of fresh spinach tossed in, and a scattering of fresh basil over the top, but I left them out because no empty nutrients are going to come between me and a meat+carbs dinner.

Do you feel like I’m constantly coming up with new hair-brained schemes that I swear full allegiance to only to revert back from a few weeks later? I kind of do. Like white rice- earlier this year I said we were going to diversify the grains we eat after reading a terrifying report on the arsenic levels in rice. Barley is just as good as rice!, I proclaimed arrogantly. I haven’t cooked barley in 5 months, and I cook rice at least once a week. Or my plans to stop looking at my phone before bed. I did that for maybe one week and then went right back to it. (But now I’m off that again out of solidarity with the kids). I’m worried that the new screen-free peace we’re enjoying is going to be another one of my passing fads. That we’ll somehow slip back into our old patterns and we’ll all be cranky and not enjoy each other’s company like we have this past week. I’m really gonna try to not let this slip away. Have a happy week!