Thanksgiving food

I'm planning to have a Thanksgiving dinner. What types of food do you serve besides turkey? What about dessert? All ideas are welcome.

My traditional Thanksgiving meal consists of:

Turkey

Stuffing

Mashed potatoes

Gravy

Cranberry sauce

Yams in orange sauce (this is a family traditional recipe, some people have brussel sprouts, succotash or other vegetables)

Jello salad (again a family tradition, but many people have some kind of Jello salad, often containing marshmallows!)

For dessert: pumpkin pie, of course! I also make pecan pie, which is more of a southern US dish.

Most ingredients are available in Hong Kong so you should be able to serve what you usually do.

No,nothing to do with what the pilgrims ate. It's just something that has evolved as a fairly common Thanksgiving dish. I doubt that they ate mashed potatoes either...

hkkm, thanks you. What is jello salad?

claire, this is my first ever thanksgiving dinner.

Jello salad has Jello (jelly, flavoured gelatine mix) as the main ingredient, with other things mixed in. My recipe includes walnuts, chopped apple and celery, pineapple, stuff like that. As I said, some people include miniature marshmallows.


Just curious, why have you decided to have a Thanksgiving dinner? I'm assuming that you're not American, or you would know all about what is normally served. So why celebrate an American holiday?

I'm preparing


Appetizers

hot artichoke dip

crudites

spicy sausages (not really thanksgiving ish but serving a bunch of men who like hot and spicy MEAT)

7 layer dip (again not really thanksgiving but same reason as above)

Sliced cheese and whatnot

pumpkin soup



turkey

Ham

Maple cornbread sausage stuffing - apples and the like

mashed yams

mashed potatoes

green beans

carrot corn mix


dessert

sweet potato pie

pumpkin pie

brownies

cranberry toffee cookies

hkkm, i'm a newly wed. My husband is an american, so i'm planning to do my first thanksgiving.

and i also wants to do something nice for him too.

I am a naturalized American and Thankgiving is my favorite holiday. Beware that roasting a turkey is no small matter and most ovens here in HK are not large enough for even a small bird, which is why I am getting mine this year from the American Club. Make sure you take measurements of your oven before you head out to the store to select a turkey that will fit. Back in New York I would usually get my turkey fresh but I don't think they are available here (?). Butterballs usually have clear cooking instructions tucked inside the bird so follow them carefully---especially re. thawing. Have a great meal.

check www.epicurious.com for Thanksgiving menu ideas- both traditional and more modern.

Hi Beautyful, nice thing for you to do for hubby! To be honest, as various members of my American family have married spouses from different ethnic backgrounds (e.g. Italian, Irish, German, Chinese, Russian), I've learned that each region and ethnic group has its own particular "flavor" of Thanksgiving, literally! For instance, in the deep south where I'm from we generally serve rice rather than mashed potatoes, and there are whole books written on regional variations of stuffing (in the deep south we usually use cornbread for stuffing, but up north "they" use regular bread to make stuffing). Although time has passed now, ask your hubby what his particular traditional foods are, because it's really about what HE wants!

:-) You will have this opportunity again at Christmas! A lot of times at Christmas a family will cook some large roast of meat, whether leg of lamb, beef roast, ham, goose, or turkey, and then have another set of traditional holiday foods and desserts. So there are two big cooking / "comfort food" opportunities very close together! And if he's American, his family might also have some special tradition for super bowl Sunday (big American football day), perhaps to have friends over for a simple meal of chili, cornbread, salad and beer while watching the "game" on TV. Oh, and then there's also New Year's food. Where I'm from, we simply must eat cornbread and collard or turnip greens, plus generally black eyed peas and perhaps a bit of ham hock on New Year's Eve. I think the legend is that as the spirit of the new year comes in, it will see that you are eating so austerely and take pity on you and bless you with a more prosperous new year. But traditions where I'm from are heavily influenced by African customs and folklore (e.g. the rice and greens are West African food traditions), and the cornmeal based food is Native American, so in your hubby's region of USA they might have entirely different traditions.

thx meiguoren for the infor.

I can't wait for christmas to help out her mom for the turkey.