We may be coalescing something resembling a tradition here

[redbird]

This is the third year adrian_turtle has had Thanksgiving dinner with me and cattitude, and the second that it's been just the three of us. There's nothing like a standard menu yet, and I expect and hope there will always be some variation, but the roast bird (I carve), the cranberry-orange relish, and the maple-glazed onions are settling happily into place. Some sort of green vegetable is good, but a salad fits that niche as well as green beans. There will be dessert, but it may not include chocolate mousse.

Clearly, if other people join us at the table, there may be foods they insist on as essential to Thanksgiving, or that they just like and are happy to cook or bring.

Comments

[callunav.livejournal.com]

I was talking about this at work last week, and found myself pointing out that there are no green vegetables that are an unshakable part of the Great American Thanksgiving Meal, which makes sense when it's viewed as an end-of-harvest feast day. You get the greens in all summer, maybe as late as September. Late November is not greens time. It's frost-fruit, late fall fruit (apples) and dried fruit, meat, grains, and late crops - pumpkin and other winter squashes, and some roots (onions - big round onions, not spring onions - sweet potatoes, maybe regular potatoes, etc.. I think carrots are earlier.) I just can't think of anything green that anyone - at least in the northern half of the country - would be harvesting at this time. It's usually post-first-frost, after all. So it makes sense to me that some people have greens and some people have green beans, and some people have salads, but it doesn't coalesce because it doesn't have - if you'll forgive the phrase - roots.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

Oh, and nuts. It's a good time of year for nuts.

[redbird]

Well, adrian_turtle suggested Brussels sprouts, but I not only dislike them (too bitter), the smell of them cooking can be annoyingly pervasive.