Super Bowl of Gravy

Sports fans all have their different, yet individually unique end-of-season finale. Football has The Super Bowl, baseball has The World Series, soccer has The World Cup, and so on and so on. But for us foodies, we have Thanksgiving. We wait all year to wow our friends and family with an extravigent array of foods stemming from some form of a historical version or interpretation if what we think the settlers had after that first years harvest. Our food magazines start coming in September, tempting us with pictures of pumpkin pie, new casseroles made with wild rice, seeds, and different varieties of squash. We start to salivate, picturing something a little like that on our table. Y'all know that I hardly follow recipes, but I do love to see what others are cooking. I take ideas and turn them into things that I want to eat. I imagine the flavors, then I imagine a few of them changing. I can "see" what it will taste like if I make a little change here and a little change there. 

My mom didn't have any of her Thanksgiving recipes written down. At least not that I've found anywhere. My sister may have them, but I honestly don't know. So each year for my Thanksgiving, I just go in blind and try to recreate what my taste bugs remember from childhood. What I would love to have is her dressing recipe written down. I try every year to match what she use to do, and I have yet to get it right. It was cornbread and buscuits. Sautéed carrots, onions, and celery with homemade turkey stock. There as a lot of sage, rosemary, and thyme but I don't know the exact proportions. 

I also enjoy adding new dishes each year. Things that I see on Food Network, or read about in a magazine. I found a cranberry sauce recipe a few years ago that included pears and ginger. I loved it! I grew up with both cranberry sauce, and another cranberry dish that we called cranberry relish. We used the meat grinder to grind cranberries, oranges, and apples, then mixed them all together, added sugar, and let it sit over night. It was my job, since it didn't require cutting or the stove/oven. Mama would cut and core the apples for me, and cut the oranges so they fit into the grinder. This year, I'm thinking I'll make a mixture of the two. I usually make both, and we have way too much. I don't have a meat grinder, so into my food processor, I'll pulse the cranberries and then dump them into a bowl. I'll zest the oranges, then put the sections into the processor to get a good pulse/chop as well. Mama use to do the whole orange, but it think the pith makes it bitter, so I'll take an extra step and zest, then get the sections out separately. This will allgo into the bowl as well. Then the apples will have their turn in the processor. I'll do the pear the same way as the apple, then I'll put a piece of "ginger in syrup" into the processor as well. After everything is chopped nicely and stirred happily in their bowl, I'll add sugar to get to the perfect stage of tart and sweet. 

I'll also be making a batch of gluten free stuffing/dressing, by making gf cornbread and other breads as it's base. I don't think there is such a thing as too much dressing, and to be honest, the dressing and gravy are all I'm after on Thanksgiving. Yeah, the turkey is supposedly the "star", but on my plate, I put the things that assist in getting gravy into my mouth with the least amount of embarrassment. I honestly have anxiety about going to other families homes for Thanksgiving because I know there won't be enough gravy. I could sneak some into a flask, and smuggle it in. And by flask, I mean a 5-gallon Gatorade dispenser. 

Play with your recipes and your food. You might just like it.