Thanksgiving, Paul Simon, SNL, Turkey, Still Crazy

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

I wanted to share my favorite clip of Paul Simon on SNL dressed as a turkey singing Still Crazy After All These Years. It's great. It's hysterical. But it is not available online????

That's right every lead led to a note that said this video has expired or nor longer exists or was removed by the owner.

Annoying yes. But in my frustration I did find the intro into the song which is also quite funny. It features George Harrison, Chevy Chase, and of course Lorne Micheals..

So let's all be thankful for the vastness of the web. Hopefully, someday it will also have Paul Simon in a turkey suit.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Pumpkin Soup Recipe for Thanksgiving

Pumpkin soup is one of my favorite Thanksgiving treats. One of my cousins started making it a few years ago and now I have to have it every Thanksgiving. Unfortunately this cousin isn't attending Thanksgiving this year so I decided to make it myself.

Of course I can never follow a recipe as written so here is my version of Pumpkin soup.

First you're going to need a big pot of chicken stock. I like to make my own stock.

Making stock:
Buy a whole chicken, cook it, eat it and then boil the bones with an onion, carrot, celery, salt, pepper and bay leaf. Let this simmer for as many hours as you can manage.

Now that you've got stock, Saute an onion and 3 cloves of garlic in a couple tablespoons of butter.

While you're doing this take a pumpkin, slice it in half, clean out the seeds and guck, place on a lightly oiled cookie sheet like two mountains and bake it at 400 for about an hour till the skin gets bubbly.

While that's baking, mix your sauteed onion and garlic into the stock. You can add salt, pepper and thyme at this point to taste and let it simmer.

Once your pumpkin is done and cooled scoop out the pumpkin meat and add it to the stock let that simmer and then take a hand mixer and blend it till it's almost smooth but still has a little texture. Now add a cup or so of cream and more salt, pepper, and thyme to taste.

Now optional: is to add Rooster sauce. I like a little spice to it don't go crazy though, that stuff's hot.

It was served to me with Asiago cheese, but you can use whatever you like. I used Manchego and it was really good.

Sorry about the vagaries of my recipe, but it's soup once you have stock just throw in all the stuff you like and blend, you can't really go wrong.

Happy Thanksgiving!!!!

Here's last years Celery stuffed with Cream Cheese recipe. That's another favorite of mine. It's got a secret ingredient....

Thanksgiving Celery with Cream Cheese

Celery and cream cheese may not be the sexiest recipe I could give you for Thanksgiving, but of all the Thanksgiving foods it's one of my favorites. In preparation for this post I looked around online to see if my recipe was anywhere else. I'll admit I wasn't that thorough, but in a cursory search I didn't see it.

This is my grandmother's recipe who was raised in Minnesota, but it was really the next best thing to Norway. I don't think she even learned to speak English until she was about ten in 1920. Which is my round about way of saying this is the Norwegian way to make celery with cream cheese. Like any good Norwegian there aren't a lot of frills or pomp, but it definitely gets the job done.

Ingredients:

Celery
Cream Cheese
Crumbled blue cheese
Onion juice

Wash your celery and cut into desired length. Then mix cream cheese and blue cheese. I would say about a tablespoon of blue cheese to a stick or tub of cream cheese. Then add the secret ingredient onion juice. To render the juice just cut an onion in half and drag a sharp knife over the flesh repeatedly. You'll get a bit of the onion too but mostly you'll get juice. Add about a tablespoon of juice. You can adjust measurements to your personal taste.



Here's the lady herself rocking some seriously fabulous 1930's lounge attire. You can do that too,if you stick to celery on Thanksgiving. Or at least that's what she would have told me while I was scarfing down cookies.

Count down to Thanksgiving

I love Thanksgiving. I know we don’t get gifts and there’s no candy associated with it, but I just love it. I love the delegation of cooking duties, and the cooking frenzy that follows. I love the unapologetic plethora of desserts (My Uncles brother brings the biggest plate of baklava you’ve ever seen). I love that Thanksgiving has no religious affiliation, so it’s good for everyone, with the possible exception of American Indians. My family is a religiously diverse group. We have Jews, Muslims, Catholics, and Christians; mostly nonpracticing, this is the one holiday that is all inclusive, we can all be thankful for our blessings. But mostly, I like that we sit down with our family and are grateful for each other.
In my family my Uncle gives a short speech before we eat. (It’s his house and he is the oldest male, patriarchy is alive and well.) In it he usually list things, as a family, we are grateful for, marriages, babies, graduations. It is a great feeling to be in the speech. I loved it when my husband was welcomed to the family in the speech and years later when my daughter was. He usually says something about the family members who have passed, and in that way they are there with us. I feel so connect in these moments, knowing I am part of a tribe.
After all the leftovers have been pack away and the last piece of baklava devoured, we return to our lives. Knowing that we are loved and, if not understood, at least excepted by this clan. For me Thanksgiving is about family, in all it’s variations, I can’t think of anything to be more grateful for.

I've included a picture of my daughters first thanksgiving with my grandmother (age 100) at her last.