Is There Traditional Thanksgiving Food? You'd Better Believe It!

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.  No secret about that.  And I like certain foods for Thanksgiving.  No secret about that either.

In fact when I taught the Evaluation Paper during ENGL 111 at Ivy Tech, I used Thanksgiving as my example for setting up criteria, which is essential in evaluating anything.  This was one of my favorite lessons to teach, and as a result, the papers were usually pretty good (due to the excellent teaching of how to write one, of course :) )

I used Thanksgiving as my topic and set up the criteria of Customs, Food, and Activities.

Especially the food.  The food is sacred.

As I told it when I was teaching this particular criteria, Thanksgiving food is very traditional. In fact the menu is Thanksgiving Food according to Grandma Greta.

She fixed the BEST Thanksgiving dinner ever.    Turkey.  Stuffing.  Scalloped oysters.  Mashed potatoes and gravy.  Green beans.  Corn.  Sweet potatoes.  Cranberry relish.  Cranberry salad.  A relish tray including all kinds of pickles and olives.  Pies --- pumpkin, pecan, apple, raisin.  Yummmmmmmy.  And the rolls?  Hot rolls with real butter  and homemade strawberry preserves.  It didn't get any better than that.

Thanksgiving 1975 I stayed in Indiana to spend the holiday with Gary and his family.  We weren't engaged yet, but we had talked about it and had looked at rings.  It was time to meet the extended family and spend a long weekend with the love of my life!  I volunteered to bring something and Agnes agreed to my suggestion of sweet potatoes and scalloped oysters.  During the meal Leo and Uncle Bud were raving about both of those dishes, and I learned later that these two items were not usually on the Siemens family Thanksgiving menu.  Later Gary asked me what I thought about the day, and I said I had enjoyed it and meeting his aunts and uncles, but I was a little surprised at some of the food.  I had never had goulash at Thanksgiving before.

His response was classic - "You have never had goulash at Thanksgiving?  Doesn't everyone have goulash at Thanksgiving?"  Well, no.    I discovered later that goulash is served not only at Thanksgiving, but at Christmas and Easter and at various other holiday get-togethers.

That was new to me!

The next year we went to Grandma Greta's for Thanksgiving dinner.  Now, I thought, he would see how a Thanksgiving meal really should be!  The turkey,  Mashed potatoes.  Sweet potatoes.  Green beans.  Homemade rolls with real butter.  All of the pies.   Then Aunt Joretta arrived with her contribution to the meal---taco salad.

Well, I never heard the end of that one.

No more laughing at goulash when our very traditional Thanksgiving dinner at Grandma's including----taco salad.

When I taught that lesson to my Ivy Tech students, they always had to chuckle at my story.  Every year I would see someone who had been in my class the previous year who would ask me if we were having goulash for Thanksgiving.

I wish I could say no, since we host the holiday dinner now.

When we began to hose the Thanksgiving dinner in 2006 I did not include goulash on the menu and I did a lot of the cooking.  I asked people to bring certain things, and goulash was never something that I thought about including.

It was missed.

On the second year Leo was raving about the food at the end of the meal, but he mentioned there was one thing missing----goulash.

The third year Leo and Agnes came early, as they always did, and brought the pies and relish trays as I had asked her to do.  But then Leo asked for a hot pad----and lo and behold, he came in with a big casserole dish of....goulash.

 Every year after that, goulash was on the table for our Thanksgiving meal.

Now that Leo and Agnes are gone, the making of goulash has fallen to Karen.  She can duplicate the dish fairly well.  There is no recipe for it---we just know what Agnes always used to make it.

So this year the Siemens family Thanksgiving will continue on with the traditional foods.  Turkey.  Ham.  Stuffing.  Mashed potatoes and gravy.  Green beans.  Corn.  Relish trays.  Pies.  Cranberry salad.  No sweet potatoes or oysters this year.  

But there will be goulash.