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Thanksgiving Feasting: Readers’ Traditions

Dear Bay Weekly:

The Thanksgiving meal I remember most is the one I never had. In our family, Thanksgiving involved not one but four meals. First there was the Feast: turkey, stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, peas, cranberry sauce and mashed turnips of all things, though no one could remember how that tradition started. This was followed by three kinds of pie: apple, pumpkin and mince.

The second meal was sandwiches: sliced turkey on white bread, always white bread, with mayo, cranberry sauce and more stuffing.

The third meal was a turkey pie. All the leftovers were scrapped into a casserole and covered with mashed potatoes. The dish was placed in the oven and heated until the potato topping was golden brown.

The final meal was the soup. The turkey carcass was placed in water with herbs and onions and simmered all day long until every bit of flavor was extracted from the remaining morsels and bones. Into the broth, we threw anything not nailed down.

My sister was hosting the holiday most remembered. To remove the bones from the soup, she poured the long-simmering broth through a colander placed in the sink to minimize the effects from splashing. It was only as she lifted the strainer to dump the bones in the trash that she noticed she had neglected to place any vessel underneath. To this day, I remember that phantom soup the most.

–Iain S. Baird, Annapolis

Dear Bay Weekly:

With family members scattered across the globe and no children of our own, my husband and I tend to share our Thanksgivings dinner with other orphans in the neighborhood. This tradition began in the mid-1980s when we moved to the D.C. area. 

Soon it was not unusual to seat 30-plus guests, many of whom would bring their family members along with a bottle of wine, knowing they couldn’t find a better turkey dinner than that served by Master Chef Miller. 

One year a thank-you Christmas present reached us from the other side of the country, the cookbook A Taste of Oregon. Always interested in incorporating new recipes into his repertoire, my chef chose Sweet Potato Delight to serve the following Thanksgiving. Alas, the recipe called for milk, but he’d used the last drop in the mashed potatoes. What liquid to use was a dilemma until one of our orphans handed him a bottle of rum with the words, “this might do.” And do it did, not only that year, but every year since, making Delightfully Smashed Sweet Potatoes a sure delight with orphans at Thanksgiving wherever we call home.

–Maureen Miller, St. Marys, Georgia

Another Way We Can Help Restore the Bay

Dear Bay Weekly:

Thank you so much for the Oct. 16 article in Bay Weekly, “Committed to the Chesapeake — From Here to Eternity.” My wish is that this may help the public understand how they can also help restore the Bay — not just ours but everywhere.

–Doris F. Ricketts, St. Leonard

Editor’s note: Mrs. Ricketts’ husband, Ted, was committed to the Chesapeake in a memorial reef ball. If you missed the story, find it at http://www.bayweekly.com/old-site/year08/issuexvi42/dockxvi_42.html.