Ed. — From the Sunday, Nov. 19, 2023.
VIRGINIA BEACH — I have a confession. I’ve never been a huge fan of Thanksgiving. Just the word itself conjures up images of dull colors, dull food and the tedium of Turkey Day TV.
As a kid, I was always spared parades and endless football because I spent the day outside riding my horse or cavorting with friends.
I couldn’t escape the inevitable, though. At some point, I’d have to sit down to a table loaded with food that seemed as dull and dry as the season’s colors. I never liked turkey or stuffing. Vegetables seemed bland. Pumpkin pie was, well, boring.
I know that Thanksgiving foods are a favorite with many. I understand some people have modified Mom’s Thanksgiving menu because of time or dietary restrictions, while others would be mortified if they didn’t follow family recipes to the letter.
I fall into the former category. I’ve found ways to adapt the Thanksgiving dinner to my own taste, and I decided to ask other local homemakers what they did.
Tradition is very important to Sigma resident Ann Henley, who was instrumental in organizing the Colonial Dinner, for many years a tradition at Tabernacle United Methodist Church. She still faithfully follows her mother’s Thanksgiving recipes.
“I don’t want to change it because I always feel as if my mother and Nanny were over my shoulder watching me,’ she said, “and they’d know if I changed something.”
So she makes candied yams as her mother did, by first boiling then slicing the sweet potatoes. She sprinkles brown sugar and cinnamon on them. Sometimes, she adds maple syrup, as her mother did.
“If I use the maple syrup, I use less brown sugar,” Henley said.
Other menu items, including butter beans and turkey, stuffing and sweet potato biscuits, remain the same, but Henley does make a slight modification with collards. Her family raised their own hogs, and her mother seasoned collards with hog jowls or salt pork from the smokehouse. Henley now seasons them with a ham bone. It gives them a smoky flavor and is less greasy.
Cindy Weatherly, owner of Cindy’s Produce, clings to the old way of cooking greens. She prepares Hanover salad or collards on Thanksgiving. No matter which one she cooks, she includes smoked meat, potatoes and corn meal dumplings — though the dumplings can be a little tricky. It took her years to achieve the moist perfection that she and her family enjoy.
“I’ve had many that came out like hockey pucks in the past,” she said.
Weatherly once tried to make a substitution by serving homemade cranberry sauce instead of the canned variety. Her family rebelled. She went back to canned.
Canned cranberry sauce was probably the one thing that I liked about Thanksgiving dinner when I was a kid. As an adult, I’ve always made homemade cranberry sauce. I really prefer the taste, and its pretty color brightens the holiday table.
I’ve made other changes, too. I’m a vegetarian, so that gives me the perfect excuse not to eat the turkey I never liked. Instead, I usually cook tofu, sliced and prepared with saffron rice, which substitutes for stuffing. I baste it with olive oil and season it with rosemary and perhaps a twist of lemon or a splash of white wine. Then I garnish it with cranberries to give it a festive appearance and bake it. Even omnivores say that they like it, and my daughter and son-in-law plan to share my tofu even though they’re also cooking turkey for themselves.
I also prepare either kale or collards, but my cooking methods are nothing like my mother’s. She boiled hers for hours with a lot of salt pork.I prefer mine tender-crisp, seasoned with turmeric and served with a dressing made from olive oil and lemon.
So, yeah, I respect the old traditions, but I confess to being a bit of a rebel as well. When it comes to Thanksgiving, whatever recipes you follow, the important thing is that the family enjoys the day, right?
The author is a contributor to The Independent News. Her journalism has also appeared in The Virginian-Pilot.
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