Posted on 11/12/2013 8:47:35 AM PST by US Navy Vet
...Memory/Tradition and Family Recipe.
It’s a small hot or cold container that the US Army uses
I’m hoping my future Thanksgivings will be my favorites. Getting my house remodeled with a great room containing the kitchen, dining room and living room,large enough for all my (soon-to-be) six grandchildren and their parents to fit into at one time. This Thanksgiving, I’m having to use my downstairs den as a makeshift kitchen and have already had the rain get into it 3 times since there is no roof on the area under construction, so no family gatherings this year. BUT, my parents are still with us and I am very, very grateful for that.
Man, I remember that....made the liberal’s heads explode. Made me feel proud to be an American.
What I wouldn’t give to feel that way again.
I remember being in Basic at Ft. McClellan, AL. I was enjoying a fairly good turkey dinner when the base commander, a Gen. North, came up and asked me how the food was. Damn near choked to death answering him.
I forgot the green bean casserole.
But seriously, I want to share a story I hear 2 years ago while I was I Luxembourg touring the numerous WWII Battle of the Bulge museums along the northern west-east highway.
We were in Diekirch at the museum. It is a large place with several vignettes of actual scenes from the B of the B. In the fall of 1944 the US third Army under Gen. Patton liberated the northern half of Luxembourg by pushing the Panzer unit back into Germany. Since the war was not yet over, the US Army occupied the territory and they were housed in the local farmers’ barns with the cattle and other animals. It was a very cold winter season there and the year 1944-1945 proved to be the coldest on record. There is a scene which shows the US army cook preparing a Thanksgiving meal. A few other GI’s are shown and a farm woman with her small daughter are sitting there as well. Now you may wonder where they got the provisions to make a Thanksgiving dinner in Nov 1944 in the Ardennes mountains. It seems the US gov’t decided that the GI’s deserved to celebrate Thanksgiving after they had liberated Luxembourg and they somehow managed to ship over provisions for the dinner.
The museum guide told us the they still occasionally get visits from German soldiers who were in the Panzer division which was pushed back into Germany. One fellow saw the pictures and the scene and commented, “I remember how cold it was that year, and we were in our foxholes. We could smell the aroma coming from the village. I told my comrades that “If the Americans can feed their troops with such good smelling food in the middle of a war, there is no way we (the Germans) are going to win this war.”
As it happened, the Germans did eventually retake the Ardennes all the way to Bastogne, but in the end a second liberation took place in the Battle of the Bulge. To this day, the Luxembourgers honor the US GI’s and the memory of Gen. George Patton and his 3rd Army. We were told that the old timers will not allow anyone to badmouth Patton. They are so very grateful yet to the US GI’s for liberating them twice.
O Ok, I am Navy so that is why I never heard or saw one.
HAHAHA...that is mean...so why am I LOL’ing here?
Getting in a nice bike ride, eating cold pizza, and pretending the only person I share the world with is the one I wake up next to, because she really is the only one I WANT to share it with. Never been a fan of the turkey dinner, or the family gathering, and thanks to adulthood I can not do them.
Hubby and I were cooking together and getting quite testy in the kitchen. The stress of the holiday getting to us, kids coming over with guests,,and hubby/I kept telling each other how to cook our respective dishes. Well hubby started gravy and I finished it,,stirring in more and more flour noticing it really wasn’t thickening. It got a little thick, so we went with it.
Noticed later how everything on the plate had a sweet taste to it. I thought it was the onions in the stuffing and green bean casserole. It wasn’t. We all ate happily and sent the kids along with their leftovers (we always tell guests to bring something to take home leftovers as we always over cook)....
Sometime later hubby was cooking something and couldn’t get the roux to set,,,,turns out what we thought was flower in the cannister was actually powdered sugar! Then it hit us!!! Thanksgiving!!!!! That’s why everything was sweet,,we were using powdered sugar instead of flour! The kids will NEVER allow us to forget this. They tell us to lock up the powdered sugar every Thanksgiving,,then they give us a fresh bag of it every Christmas. It’s now a joke in our family. We’ll hear it again in a couple of weeks, I’m sure.
Love that story,,almost as much as the one where hubby took a ladder and placed an OPEN can of syrupy sweet potatoes on top of his sister’s kitchen cabinet. His sis and her hubby HATE sweet potatoes. Bro in law always wears cowboy hat. He climbed the ladder knowing there was a can of sweet potatoes on the cabinet. He did not know it was open,,,,,and he grabbed it like it was going to bite him and it poured out all over his hat..! We ran out of there laughing! He was not happy. NO worries, family did not suffer any terminal split because of it. It’s a joke now.
I love Thanksgiving! I have so much to be thankful for,,including my FRiends here on FR. Thank you too Jim!!!! Very much.
Since the sandwiches the day after are my favorite thing, I`m doing a turkey breast and making same, w potato salad, cranberry sauce and various mind altering refreshments. I may even put a line in the water.
When I was young, my most beloved Thanksgiving memories are of the fantastic turkey aroma in the air, setting the table, Mom and Dad, grandparents over, my sister and brother, dad and the other men watching Oklahoma play Nebraska, then the big dinner - absolutely wonderful!
When I married, my happiest memories are of my wife and I making our own traditions - i.e. cooking the turkey at midnight to 4am, watching “Miracle on 34th St.” while waiting, setting the table, our kids growing up and that their favorite thing was mashed potatoes - they fought over them - Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade on the TV, then watching some football (unfortunately OU no longer plays Nebraska on Thanksgiving anymore). Wonderful memories.
We always had sausage and chestnut stuffing, 1960s NYT cookbook recipe. Always. But one son is vegetarian, and I can’t eat wheat, so now I do plain chestnut, and breadless, and regular. And then some of the others say they don’t like chestnuts, and I’ve always said tough, more for me, but the chestnuts are a major nuisance to peel, and the people who don’t like them refuse to help, so I guess this year I’ll do plain sausage as well.
I think that means making four different casseroles of DRESSING the night before, and cooking an unstuffed bird on T’day. Where the Alton Brown recipe for brined turkey with a triangular foil dickey mentioned in a previous post would come in handy.
Because we always have chestnut and sausage dressing. Always.
I always try to give more than one thank at the table.
One Thanksgiving dinner was made memorable by our family's psychopathic poodle having surreptitiously gotten hold of the remains of the main course. We had to get it away from him before he ingested a bone, and he was bound and determined to retain possession. The little SOB would have killed everyone in the room to keep that turkey carcass if it had been in his power.
The incident was destined to be that canine lunatic's finest hour, because 30+ years later, it is the one memory of him that everyone in the family still carries around.
Mr. niteowl77
Going to my Aunt Florence’s. We did it up like Pilgrims. She is in Mass. (I’m originally from there as well). THe table was perfect and my Uncle Walt was at the end of the table, carving the Turkey as in a Normal Rockwell Painting. There were usually upwards of 20-25 seated around. We’d eat early..1-1:30. Then at 6 or 7 we would all come back for round 2..turkey sandwiches on homemade bread and wonderful pies for dessert.
I could go on for hours on those memories.
Leftovers are the best part of Thanksgiving. :)
If ever a thread needed a “Like” button, this is the one! :-)
Thanks for the laugh!
Just being with everyone. It’s my favorite holiday because there are no gifts and little fuss, just food and fellowship all day long. I love to make a sandwich with ham, stuffing, turkey, and gravy in one of my Mom’s delicious rolls.
I’m thankful my family has to work hard to find things to argue about. We always do though.
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