Traditional Foods at Thanksgiving Family Feasts

[spiritbird]

Many families have traditional foods they serve other than the turkey and trimmings. In Maryland just about everyone that is native serves sauerkraut made is different ways. Some may be surprised by this or turned off some. Here is the recipe that goes way back in my family and took on the name of the man that made it. We call it Wayne Kraut and it is simply yummy and very easy prepare.





1 pkg. fresh kraut (not rinsed)
1 med. onion chopped fine
1/2 pound bacon chopped
15 oz. can diced tomatoes (not drained)

Cook bacon and onions until done
Add tomatoes & Kraut to the mix (including bacon drippings) Mix well
Place in sl. greased casserole dish and bake 1 hr. at 350 degrees (may be doubled for a crowd)

Do you prepare any family traditional foods for the feast you are willing to share?

[Blancaej]

Great recipe! Thanks for sharing Dianne. What a great idea for a thread.

My mom always made lasagna with our holiday dinners! Because we are always trying to eat better and we don't need the extra calories to add to an already ginormous meal, we no longer make it. Instead I make her lasagna recipe a few times a year for dinner. She only made it at Christmas, Thanksgiving and Easter. So it was a real treat when I was younger. Now that I know how to make it, I can make it when ever I want! :th_biggrin: Her recipe is pretty simple:

1 - lb cooked ground beef
1 jar pasta sauce (such as ragu)
3 or 4 different cheeses (we use cheddar, monteray jack, mozerella & parm. (We don't like ricotta)
Cooked Lasagna noodles (takes about 15 noodles, 5 layers)

Cook beef, mix in sauce.
In a 9x13 pan spray some non stick spray.
Poor a layer of sauce, then noodles for the first layer.
Next layer put in another layer of sauce, then some of each of the 4 cheeses then noodles again.
Repeat above layer until pan is full to the top. 15 noodles makes about 5 layers.
Top layer will end with sauce and cheese on the last layer of noodles.

Bake covered with foil - I want to say at 350 degrees for 45 minutes. I am doing the recipe out of my head. I don't even have it written down. LOL! You will know it is done when it is bubbling.

[spiritbird]

Yumy I am now officially hungry again! I am so used to cooking lasagna from a frozen dish. Now I will try yours.

[Honesty]

We always have the very traditional Christmas Dinner, which I know is quite different from yours. I can share this with you if you would like to see it?

[Blancaej]

We always have the very traditional Christmas Dinner, which I know is quite different from yours. I can share this with you if you would like to see it?

We would love to hear what your traditional Christmas dinner is Wendy!


Yumy I am now officially hungry again! I am so used to cooking lasagna from a frozen dish. Now I will try yours.

It's such a simple but delicious recipe Dianne. Definitely give it a whirl!

[Honesty]

Here in the UK, Boxing Day is just as big a celebration day as Christmas day, so we have the traditional Christmas Dinner on both days.

For starter, we have Prawn Cocktail. This is....

King prawns on top of salad, and then a sauce poured over the top. The sauce is made with...tomato puree, mayonnaise, vinegar and pepper. Lemon juice is the squeezed over the top. This is served with brown bread and butter.

Dinner consists of, Turkey, Roast Potatoes cooked in goose fat, Stuffing, Cocktail Sausages wrapped in bacon, Yorkshire Puddings, Honey Roast Parsnips, Swede and Brussel Sprouts.
The stuffing is made with, dried paxo, Sausage Meat, Onions and Sage, this is all mixed together with an egg. I put half inside the turkey and the rest I cook on its own. I then make a turkey gravy, with white wine and cream.

None of my family like Christmas Pudding, so I make a Trifle, which consists of...

A layer of sponge at the bottom, Strawberry Jelly is then poured over that until it sets. Once this is set, I add a layer of Strawberries. On top of this I add Strawberry Angel Delight, another layer of Strawberries, then Fresh Cream on the top, sprinkled with Chocolate flakes and decorated with more Strawberries.

Now, by the time we have eaten all of this, we cannot move. LOL

[spiritbird]

Wendy that sounds fantastic! I was going to make a siggy here of OMG but for some reason lately they do not pop in the reply section. I am hoping you have room for a few of us that want to eat a holiday meal with you. Boxing day? Is that what you call our Thanksgiving?

[Pinkbirdy]

Wow this is making me hungry !! Dianne I want to try your kraut dish [and Wendy ,Dave is liking how the potatoes in goose fat sounds :) The only thing that I made different this year for was for my birds . I had pumpkin left over from what I had made . I made a pumpkin steel oat mash [with everything I could think to add to it]pasta ,blackeyed peas and fruit . Everyone was ok with it except Belly [shed rather starve than eat something she didn't like :)]and Blanca, just cracked up over your new sig :)

[Turquoise]

Well now, I no longer cook anything special for Thanksgiving or Christmas it being just Jerry & me here to consume it. And he is not very good at eating leftover holiday foods for weeks afterwards. One of the things I really miss about my son being gone from the home. he was my 'garbage can' and ate anything as long as it was not a veggie. He would never have made it as a parrot. LOL I got a text message from him this morning and he told me he ate turkey, ham, dressing and sweet potatoes for us. Now that doesn't sound too far off until you realize he hates dressing and sweet potatoes. I text him back, "Was he sick?" "Well if not he soon would be after his mind found out his mouth betrayed him and allowed such horrid things to pass through his lips." He must be sick now as I am still waiting for his reply!:th_hehe:

OK, getting back to the subject matter at hand since I so eloquently took it to a new level. :) I grew up with a Czech influence to my holiday meals. My Grandparents on my Mom's side were born in Czechoslovakia before it was broken up into the 5 states it is today, like back in 1891 and 1898. Now I must admit my Grandma was a little woman (5'1/4" tall) who could swing an axe and clear a field of Mesquites for plowing as well as my Grandpa, but she loved the modern world as well. As soon as electricity (REA) came to rural Texas she quickly joined up and put her bathroom inside! That was in 1936 I think I was told (no I am not quite THAT old). And she was the same way with her cooking and would cut out or write down any recipe she found to her liking.

So by the time I came along our holiday meals were the traditional turkey, ham, dressing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, green beans, and desserts. Oh boy could she make desserts! And this is where most of the Czech homeland tradition did still creep into her meals. I no longer have the actual recipes to add on here as they were all destroyed in the flood I had at my home in 2005 along with all my photos and so much more of my childhood & life. Our dressing was made different than most as we added finely chopped apples along with celery and onions with a white cornmeal cornbread as the base. It would be made a day before & put into the fridge to let the flavors blend, then the night before Thanksgiving or Christmas the turkey was stuffed and baked slowly all night long. By morning it was ready & falling off the bone and the house smelled so so good! :th_hug8: I will add that I am not a fan of fried turkeys!! It seems no one wants to bake them anymore and with the fried ones, to me it loses so much of the flavors & smells that take me back to my childhood which is part of what I loved about the holidays.

We would have pumpkin pies with lots of heavy whipping cream and half & half. Ours were very rich and not like any I have ever had anywhere else. We had chocolate pies, cherry coconut creme pies (that was my Mom's addition to them), and now for the ones most folks have never heard of~~cottage cheese pies which are a chess pie made by blending the cottage cheese until smooth and adding to heavy whipping cream& half & half and the juice of one orange squeezed into it. The other things we had were Grandma's kolaches. These were the sweet roll types, not this stuff they sell these days all over the country with meat stuffed in a crescent type roll. Grandma made poppy seed, apricot, peach and prune kolaches. I miss those and all the desserts the most and on occasion I will make some during other times of the year.

Dianne, your kraut sounds delicious! When I was small I can remember my grandma making homemade sauerkraut, but once she found she could buy brands she approved of she never made it again. I do like kraut at times and I was the only one of my siblings who liked it.

Blanca, I have never made homemade lasagna. I will try it one day. Thanks for sharing. :)

Wendy, ya'll do fix many things way different than us folks a bit to the west of you. LOL I have never heard before that ya'll celebrate Boxing Day. How unusual, but I can understand it as the boxing is so popular there. Here I guess the Super Bowl Game would be the US's traditional holiday feast for sports. I am like you, I find watching football or any of the contact sports to be the most boring thing I could think of doing with my time. LOL

[Honesty]

Wendy that sounds fantastic! I was going to make a siggy here of OMG but for some reason lately they do not pop in the reply section. I am hoping you have room for a few of us that want to eat a holiday meal with you. Boxing day? Is that what you call our Thanksgiving?You would all be welcome to come and have dinner with me:)

Dianne, when you click on a smiley, it takes a few seconds before you will see it appear in your post.

Here is a link to the history of boxing day...

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[Honesty]

Wendy, ya'll do fix many things way different than us folks a bit to the west of you. LOL I have never heard before that ya'll celebrate Boxing Day. How unusual, but I can understand it as the boxing is so popular there. Here I guess the Super Bowl Game would be the US's traditional holiday feast for sports. I am like you, I find watching football or any of the contact sports to be the most boring thing I could think of doing with my time. LOLLOL De'Andrea. Strangely enough Boxing Day has absolutely nothing to do with Boxing. here is a link that explains more on what it is all about......

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[Feathers First Aviary]

We have a pretty normal holiday meal here, we all go to my moms house and she makes dinner, thankfully she is very understanding of my vegan ways and makes everything completely vegan except for the turkey(or ham for christmas) and the gravy. She usually makes stuffing, mashed potatoes, corn, green beans, brussel sprouts, asparagus and crescent rolls. I also normally go to a local event we have here called vegansgiving which is a huge pot luck event where everyone brings their favorite holiday meals and we have a nice cruelty free dinner with all of the other local vegheads. Unfortunately I missed this years festivities because I made plans to go out to play bingo with my mom, I was upset when I realized they were on the same day but I hadn't seen my mom in quite a few months so I kept our date, there's always next year!

[Turquoise]

Well Wendy I am very perplexed by your "Boxing Day" tradition the day after Christmas. I truly thought you meant it is a day to celebrate boxing since it is a popular sport in your part of the world or was a one time.

I have never heard of all the different names for it for the UK or the meaning behind it. Thank you for sharing, it was an interesting read about what others celebrate and why. :)

[Blancaej]

Wendy - Love the "Boxing Day" info. That was very interesting. What a great tradition! Love to hear about your English meal as well. Thanks for sharing!

Terri - Thanks for the compliment on my new siggy! :D

De' - I loved reading all about your grandmother's cooking. You must really miss that. Sorry to hear you lost all your recipes during the flood. :(

My lasagna recipe is pretty simple. My mom has an awesome homemade spaghetti sauce recipe. But we found using a store bought sauce worked fine for the lasagna and we could make it in a lot less time. Plus, I made my mom vow she wouldn't give out her spaghetti sauce recipe. I now cook it, but we give it to no one. It's an awesome sauce! :D

[Honesty]

Well Wendy I am very perplexed by your "Boxing Day" tradition the day after Christmas. I truly thought you meant it is a day to celebrate boxing since it is a popular sport in your part of the world or was a one time.

I have never heard of all the different names for it for the UK or the meaning behind it. Thank you for sharing, it was an interesting read about what others celebrate and why. :)Yes, boxing is still a very popular sport over here.
I had absolutely no idea that you did not celebrate boxing day in the USA as we do. It was my daughter Tasha who enlightened me on this!

[Mare]

This is a great post! Thanksgiving at my house, growing up, was very traditional. Turkey, ham, mashed potatoes and turkey gravy, sweet potatoes, Brussels sprouts with bacon, dressing with sausage...oh my, this is making me hungry! I then met a man, a vegetarian man, a vegetarian man that gave me children, who I'm still with today, 34 years later.

My childhood Thanksgiving dinners have become a dim memory. We now have tofu loaf with mashed potatoes and mushroom gravy, roasted Brussels sprouts with a balsamic dressing, broccoli and cauliflower, cranberries are always on the list, creamed onions made with almond milk, sweet potato pie and apple pie for dessert.

I didn't have to cook this year. The airline served some not so amazing turkey sandwiches, though! :th_biggrin:

[spiritbird]

Umm Brussel sprouts. love them but get very sick when I eat the.