The Subtle Art of Megalithic Holiday Meals: Appetizers & Desserts

Ok, indulge me in a little family history. My mom's mother, Marjorie (my namesake), was a queen of hospitality and traditional cooking. She grew up third in a family of four girls (like Jo and the Marches!) farming through the Great Depression, and - needless to say - they made everything from scratch. Clothes, blankets, tools, lace, dairy products - everything. It blows my mind to think about the quiet dedication and skill of my grandmother and her peers. My mom loved the economy of making food and household items from raw materials; after all, buying and grinding the wheat berries to make whole wheat bread cost far less than buying healthy bread from the store - it's also a great thing to do with your daughter on a Saturday. I love the environmental and economical sustainability of living from raw materials, not to mention how it makes us more capable and less dependent on the food industry. Also, it builds beautiful family traditions.

Anyway, fastforward to my mom's Thanksgiving food traditions. It's easy to see the roots of my grandmother's Depression-era training in the amazing appetizer display my mom puts on every year. There are pickled watermelon rinds, homemade kosher dills, homemade cranberry relish and dips straight out of a 1950's Betty Crocker cookbook.

Mom has a list of items she makes for Thanksgiving dinner appetizers. The list goes like this:

- Relish tray (cranberry relish, pickled watermelon rinds, bread and butter pickles)

- Pickle tray (pickled beets, baby dill, green olives, black olives, and canned apple rings.

- Veggie tray (to appease the guilt of what you are about to partake: celery, carrots, broccoli, red peppers and green onions and radishes with homemade dill dip)

- Bread and dip bowl (her favorite is to carve the center out of a round black rye loaf and fill it with spinach dip)

- Crackers and cheese or dip (this year mom made smoked salmon dip, which was every bit as good as it sounds)

- Shrimp bowl with cocktail sauce (because we all want it)

Then there's always the random extras. The homemade fruitcake my mom compulsively made 20 jars of last year, bean salad, more shrimp.

See for yourself.

Ok, so you get moderately full from appetizers then stuff yourself on carbs at the dinner table, but you still look forward to Dessert. At our house, it's the main attraction: pies. Mom has a list of staples for pies, but she lets me add a few new each year.

The pies are:

Apple

Rhubarb custard

Pumpkin

Berry (blackberry, blueberry or mixed berry)

I usually add a mousse or custard pie. This year I took the leftover dregs from the pumpkin pies and made pumpkin cheesecake.

You can read my recipes for pumpkin pie and rhubarb custard pie on my previous posts. My blueberry recipe is straight out of Betty Crocker's Cookbook, and the apple is as follows:

6 medium to large apples, peeled cored and sliced

3/4 cup sugar, 1/2 brown 1/2 white (or all cane sugar, or sub. honey or maple syrup for 1/2)

1 tblsp cinnamon

1 tsp. ginger

1/2 tsp cloves

1/2 tsp nutmeg

5 tblsp butter

Toss dry ingredients first. Cut butter over top.

Dough and assembly:

1 cup flour to 1 stick butter (1/2 cup) ratio. Cut butter with flour until fine, add 1/2 tsp salt, one egg yolk and 2 tsp lemon juice, then 4 tblsp of water, or until it forms dough. Roll on floured surface evenly until 1/8 inch thick, lay in pie shell and cut with 1 inch excess around edges. The secret to rolling pie dough is...patience. That and continually turning over and flouring your dough. Also, lift the dough by rolling it halfway on to the rolling pin, then re-place by gently laying it in the shell. Be sure to wet the lower crust's edge lightly with water before gluing the top and bottom together.

Place fillings inside, then lay another layer of pie dough over for the crust. Cut excess leaving 1/2 inch. Fold the shell inward with your thumbs and index fingers, pinching the two layers into an even crust around the edge. Pierce the crust top in at least 6 places. Bake at 350 for 45-60 min, or until bubbling in the center.

Voila!

The pumpkin cheesecake was easy. I'll refer you to Sarah's recipe on Half Hour Meals for the cheesecake recipe; I simply added about 1 cup of pumpkin pie mix into the bottom layer.

This is actually a blueberry-elderberry pie. Cinnamon, lemon juice, maple syrup, flour and just enough tapioca made this pie stand up beautifully. I like lattices on berry pies, although cherry are the prettiest.

Pie time is when all my friends crash the house after dinner with their families hunting for pie. Lindsey brought me a present to mix with my apple cider though, and we rated it a stellar day. Because we're children of the 90s.