Thanksgiving Shopping

My mom decided that it is going to be my responsibility to host Thanksgiving at my house. In some ways this is great. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. It is all about the food, and when the meal is at my house, I have more control over what kind of food is served. Like the pastured turkey I will be picking up fresh next Tuesday from Jordandal Farm. And the potatoes that came from my garden and dad's friend's garden.

And the stuffing I'll make from home-made bread.

And the cranberry preserves.
And the pumpkin pie from a garden pumpkin.
And the homemade rolls (that I don't use the bread machine for!).
And the green bean casserole.
Yup. I'm going to make green bean casserole. I turned the TV on this past Sunday, just to see what was on. I checked the Food Network. They were in Thanksgiving mode, and the show coming up next (it might have been 8:30 or 9:00) was going to feature stovetop green bean casserole. The program was Alex's Day Off. I'd never heard of it, but I was intrigued by the recipe. I bought the ingredients (no cream of mushroom soup, sorry Michael Pollan) at the grocery store today, among other things. But when I went to the Food Network website to check out the recipe I think I found a better one from Alton Brown. I generally like Alton Brown, so I am planning to try his recipe instead. I was going to make the stovetop one tonight, because I had time, but my husband is at his graduate class, and I'd rather wait till he is home to sample it while it is fresh.

It had never occurred to me to look for recipes for green bean casserole that did not include cream of mushroom soup. But I'm glad I stumbled across some. (There are 26 different recipes for green bean casserole on the food network website.)

Since I am going to be hosting my sister and her two little girls, and my in-laws, I needed to stock up on things I don't typically buy anymore. Like soda (I felt totally bewildered in that aisle today - the last time I was there was when I needed seltzer water for ginger ale, which was difficult enough to find, but I really felt overwhelmed by the choices today. I wanted diet coke for my step-father-in-law, and I was looking for vanilla coke for my brother-in-law, but could not find it anywhere. The colors were making my head swirl. Funny how the colors of produce at the farmers market don't make my head swirl. I guess that's be cause I know if something is orange it is probably a carrot, whereas if a box of soda is red I have no idea if that means Coke, Dr. Pepper, Diet Rite, Strawberry Crush, or Code Red Mountain Dew. I ended up with root beer, because I'm fairly certain there wasn't any vanilla coke in the store today). It is amazing how easily I have become accustomed to avoiding the processed foods in the store.

Another processed purchase I made today was cereal. I've posted before that it can be a little bit challenging for me to feed my niece breakfast because she is allergic to eggs (when egg is the primary component of a dish) and oatmeal. I often eat oatmeal for breakfast, and my weekend specialties include omelets, scrambled eggs, and french toast. Some days I just have bread or toast with a topping, and during the warmer months I eat a dish of yogurt, but those are pretty boring meals for company! (Homemade applesauce, on the other hand, is very exciting, mostly because my niece sent me a video asking for more applesauce please. The first batch I gave them was a big hit.)

I have a lot of applesauce, Adele, but you're going to have to convince Uncle Michael to share it with you!
So I talked to my sister for a little while this afternoon in the store parking lot, and while we discussed the different breakfast options (pull-apart cinnamon rolls, going out - but we can't because they make peanut butter cookies in their bakery and most of their breakfast foods include lots of egg), she said "we could just have cereal." Yup, they can, because I picked up a box this afternoon. I had been planning to buy them some cereal (it is good to have familiar choices on hand for little kids who are away from home) but have not actually purchased any for myself in a while - since I looked at the Cheerios label and realized how many ingredients they have! The choice here was fairly easy - I think everyone in their family (except the baby) eats Frosted Mini-Wheats. Well, they buy a generic version. I wanted to buy a generic version too, but couldn't find one. This was another bewildering moment. Since I don't spend a lot of time in the aisles at the grocery store any more, I was not used to reading all of the packaging. All I could see was row upon row of Kellogg's products. (Did I spell that right?) I would have gotten the name brand ones, but there were so many different kinds of frosted shredded wheat I would have come home with something I didn't want. Some were strawberry. Some were cinnamon. Some were honey nut. I think some had aliens in them. Finally I saw the generic brand, which seemed to just be wheat and white frosting (read: high fructose corn syrup on top of high-fructose corn syrup flavored white flour with added artificial and natural colors to make it look like whole wheat) and put a box in my cart quickly, then moved on to the next aisle.

You know what? I just looked at the label, to see how off my guess was, and I was mildly- pleasantly surprised to see that the first ingredient is whole grain wheat, followed by sugar. There are a lot of ingredients (11) but no HFCS. (Unless the manufacturer left out a word in front of sugar, i.e., "corn." I say this because the box is not labeled as "No HFCS" which seems very strange to me in a world where everyone now knows that "corn syrup" is the bad guy.) Yes, sugar is still the second ingredient, and that is not what kids (or dads or moms or anyone) should be eating for breakfast! But anyway . . .

I am not writing this post to criticize my sister and her family or anyone who eats a traditional American diet. My intention is not to judge them or their choices. After all, the food industry has been teaming up with the government to sell this stuff to us for decades. It is no wonder that Americans make the choices they do. At the same time, I am judging the food itself. Maybe processed food seems like the only choice for some people under a given set of circumstances. (The family in Food, Inc. who walked through a grocery store and could not afford real foods comes to mind.) It is not the right choice for me right now. The more I read about processed modern foods versus real foods from nearby prepared the way our ancestors would recognize, the more I am inspired to avoid the grocery store altogether. But I'm not there yet.

Still searching for a solution to the breakfast dilemma, I bought two packages of breakfast sausages made by a WI company which are full of artificial ingredients, but they'll be a good addition to the cinnamon pull-aparts. I haven't bought frozen meat at the grocery store for a while now, but, again, it is for company and a holiday. (I may pick up a pound of local, nitrite free bacon for $5.50 when I get my turkey next week. Isn't that exciting?)

I picked up a can of evaporated milk just in case I don't find a pumpkin pie recipe that doesn't call for any. And I bought a bag of frozen green beans. I want to save my "real" green beans for Thanksgiving (the ones I froze from my garden and the CSA this summer) so I bought a frozen bag for my experiment in "real" (but not "traditional") green bean casserole. I looked at fresh beans, but, I have to be honest, it seemed ridiculous to buy fresh green beans at the grocery store. Who knows where they came from or how fresh they really are. They were quite picked over, and they were sitting next to pea pods, which is not a problem in and of itself, but the whole scene made me miss my garden. Somehow it was easier to buy green bean pieces in a plastic bag in order to keep in mind that, unless it is labeled "local," the fresh produce in the grocery store is just as much a commercial, well-traveled product as the frozen stuff in white bags. I don't know if that makes any sense or not.

While I have been writing this blog, I noticed a picture of the "welcome to Madison" bags I made for out-of-town guests at my wedding last year. We filled the bags with peanut-free items, because of Little Miss Adele, and I added apples and oranges to the bags because I wanted to include some real food, but we put all kinds of processed foods in those bags - Pringles, Capri Sun, Austin cracker sandwiches - and it is just a reminder of how much my food priorities have changed in the last year.

I have now been writing blog posts for close to four hours this evening, and need to move on with my life! The bad part about having Thanksgiving at my house is that I have been slightly stressed out about the whole thing for weeks now. For one thing, I don't have enough furniture for 11 people to relax on! Also, I can't fit anything other than the turkey in my oven, which makes me wonder when I'm going to cook the stuffing (and the green bean casserole if I go with an oven-baked version). I'm worried that there won't be enough food, etc., etc., etc. But my goal is to take some good pictures of the meal as it is being cooked, and then to get some pictures of people eating as well. I must kind of enjoy stressing out because I do it all the time.

I am by no means the only person cooking for this meal, in case I made it sound that way. My mother-in-law is bringing two apple pies from Minnesota, my parents is bringing a cranberry-apple pie, cranberry relish, and cranberry sauce, a jar of my dad's pickled beets, my mom's famous cheese dip, and appliances like a crock pot and a bigger coffee maker than the one I have. My little sister is bringing yummy pumpkin bread. My twin sister may not know it yet but she is most definitely going to be in charge of mashing the potatoes. We are not going to be short on food! And we're all going to have a wonderful time, and you'll get to read about it all right back here in a little over a week (I hope).