This has been The Year of the Pie for me as I stretched to improve my skills in this area. It was also The Year of the Great Pie Failure as more and more of my efforts ended in disaster. From my attempts to decorate pies with cutouts on top to my expansion beyond my comfort zone of fruit fillings, I haven't had a pie turn out in months. This includes my plans for Thanksgiving. This month's Shoo Fly Pie was a spectacular fail, and my buttermilk pie was only slightly better. Failure is a necessary part of the learning process however disappointing it may be.
Read MoreHoliday Baking: Old School Pumpkin Pie
I've never made a pumpkin pie. This is primarily because I've never had a pumpkin pie that I like as much as a good fruit pie. So, for the holidays, my counterpart gets what was traditional for my family growing up in close proximity to Wisconsin's cherry orchards - a nice tart cherry pie. Even on Thanksgiving.
Read MoreAll About the Gravy
Thanksgiving is about 10 days away, so it's time to get serious about cooking again. The nice thing about Thanksgiving is that it is really all about the meal - that opulent turkey dinner that most of us only muster this one day of the year. And because that turkey is really the cornerstone of the day, you want to bring your A game.
Read MoreHoliday Traditions: How Fried Oysters Came to Appalachia
Since moving to the Mid-Atlantic region, I have often wondered why folks from West Virginia eat oysters this time of year, oysters not being native to the Appalachian Mountains. A former Baltimorean back home in West Virginia provides the history of this tradition, as well as her own personal family history. Her family served them at Christmas, but I've also met folks who included them with Thanksgiving and New year's dinner. It's so well-written that I'm just going to copy it verbatim from the email she sent me.
Read MoreHow to Make Every Meal a Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving in the US is steeped in nationalistic mythology and patriotic nostalgia. From images of early European settlers breaking bread with the Native tribes after a long, harsh first year to our modern family gatherings, Thanksgiving is our national day of gratitude. President Lincoln set aside the fourth Thursday in November in 1863 as a national day of thanks, and the tradition has continued to this day.
Read MoreHoliday Baking: Lefse
Lefse is a Scandinavian flat bread made from potatoes and flour. Every holiday of my childhood included home made lefse and butter (and sometimes sugar, and the "sugar on lefse" debate is as foreign to non-Scandinavians as the dish itself). It's one of those traditional recipes that is learned by doing. I learned from my mother, who learned from her Norwegian mother-in-law. She learned how to make it on the cast iron top of the old farm cook stove on my father's farm. She taught me using a cast iron skillet in our old house on Quincy Street, the same skillet we now use to teach my nieces in her condo.
Read MoreA Note About Cranberries
Thanksgiving is less than a week away, and many of us will spend the next five days buying and prepping food. Before I get caught up in my own family gathering, here's a quick note about cranberries. Some people love them, some people hate them. I was in the latter camp until I had some that did not come out of a can. And, really, they are so easy, there is no reason not to make your cranberry sauce with the real thing.
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