Thanksgiving Traditions

And the not so conventional Thanksgiving plan for 2021

Thanksgiving 2001 with Grandma Anna in the front and THE TURKEY front and center!

My family is big on traditions. With a Jewish mother and an Italian grandmother, we had big feasts for every holiday and it always had to be the same. Not that I am complaining because I looked forward to these holiday dinners every year. When I think about any given holiday, I can almost smell and taste the food. 

My Grandma Anna was the matriarch of the family and even though she was little she was larger than life. She was in charge in her job at City Hall and she was the boss of the family. Grandma Anna loved having the family together, loved tradition and loved cooking tons of food. With her Italian heritage, there was a lot of red sauce and pasta, but not on Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving was for traditional American holiday food but with a twist of course.

Every good Italian family starts their holiday meals with antipasto. For those of you who have never had it, it varies, but typically it’s meats, cheeses, marinated vegetables, bread, etc. In Italian, it means before the meal- anti means before and pasto translates to the meal. In our house it was soppressata or dry salami, sharp provolone, a mixture of olives, hot peppers, artichoke hearts, garlic, parsley and celery (tons of celery) and some really good seeded Italian bread. You needed the bread to soak up the briny marinade on the veggies. That could be a meal in itself but then we were onto the main course.

Grandma always cooked a very large turkey, gravy, stuffing complements of Pepperidge Farm stuffing packages which I LOVED, and her famous steamed artichokes. My mother would make her infamous jello mold which was jello, cranberry juice, apples and walnuts set into a bundt style pan. It was always the biggest joke of the table and a big feat when the mold was unmolded successfully. For dessert we would have Italian pastries from the bakery, pumpkin pie, pecan pie and apple pie.

Over the years the tradition got modified as my mother started to host, although my Grandmother was still alive and very much in charge so we would fill in with different side dishes. My mother would call me with her copy of Bon Appetit magazine open to the Thanksgiving sides section and I would have mine and together we would pick a dish that turned into three extra dishes because we couldn’t help ourselves. We just wanted to try everything. We also added in rotisserie chicken for my mother and I because we both don’t love the Thanksgiving turkey. At some point we turned Thanksgiving dinner into a buffet served on the large island at my parents and my Grandmother was very upset. Despite it being more practical for everyone to help themselves she felt it was not formal enough and as well all know it strayed from the tradition of everyone passing the dishes around at the table. I still prefer the buffet option to this day.

My grandmother passed away 12 years ago and a lot has changed since then. For about 5 straight years before Covid, we started going away as a family over Thanksgiving. First on a cruise and it was that year that we realized it was really nice not having to cook the Thanksgiving dinner. Weeks of planning, hours upon hours of cooking for the meal to be devoured very quickly and all of it not super hot had lost it’s appeal. With tradition fully out the window we would go to a timeshare in Florida, pick up some prepared foods from the local supermarket, however that jello mold has followed us everywhere my mother has access to a kitchen!

So now that we are back at it at home as a family this year, we have decided to make some adaptations and we are straying from tradition again. We have one vegetarian, one teen who doesn’t love the entire meal, one 4 year old who calls all poultry turkey and refuses to eat chicken unless it’s called turkey, my mother and I who don’t love turkey and 3 other adults who will eat whatever. We decided to go rogue and pick some of our favorite foods. We are starting the meal with sushi and dumplings and a Grandma’s pizza to cut up into small pieces. This will please the vegetarian and all who never ate the antipasto anyway. Then we are having rotisserie chicken, roasted potatoes, a green vegetable, sweet potato and turkey hash made by me and requested by my 16 year old  and of course, the jello mold. I will be making apple pie for dessert and that is our meal. I am hearing rumors that a turkey breast may make an appearance for tradition’s sake. After all, my father is his mother’s son and loves tradition. 

How do you celebrate? What is your favorite food from Thanksgiving today and from your youth? Send me an email to debbie@theeffortlessktichen.com I would love to hear.

With Christmas rapidly approaching, stay tuned for my next blog post where I will share my family’s traditional Chanukah and Christmas meals.

Happy Thanksgiving and see you in the kitchen!

Debbie