Thanksgiving Menu Defies Logic, Change

What is it about the Thanksgiving meal, anyway? Even people who can’t heat a Pop-Tart without starting a grease fire become hidebound traditionalists on November’s fourth Thursday.

Thanksgiving dinner is the year’s most rigid menu, right down to the sweet midget gherkin pickles that may only be served in the little crystal relish plate that belonged to Aunt Ethel.

The menu defies logic. Most say it is their favorite meal of the year, and also agree that it is made up of dishes they wouldn’t dream of eating the rest of the year.

It isn’t lunch, it isn’t dinner. It’s huge, it’s hot, and afterward, people’s IQs slip into the low two figures as they sit around in nice clothes watching football games on TV. Or they stare into the middle distance waiting for some blood to return to their brains.

The Big 5, on almost any traditionalist’s list of must-eats, are turkey, dressing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie. After that, everyone has a nostalgic dish that “speaks” to them of holidays present and past.

“When I was growing up in Kansas City, I always used to ask my mom what they ate at the first Thanksgiving,” said Anne Scheck of Thousand Oaks. “I wanted to eat what the Pilgrims ate, sitting outside by Plymouth Rock.

“So my mom invented a casserole for me, which is sort of a Kansan’s idea of what they might have eaten up in New England by the ocean: It has soda crackers, a can of oysters and a can of cream of mushroom soup.

“I’ve never made it myself, but mom still does when she comes out to California to visit us on Thanksgiving. This is my favorite holiday--it’s about being a nation of immigrants--it brings us together,” Scheck said.

A South Carolinian, Jane McKinney of Ventura doesn’t hesitate over her favorite dish on the groaning board that holds her Thanksgiving meal today.

“Pea-and-asparagus casserole. It was brought to my husband Johnny’s family’s house for a funeral in South Carolina,” she said. “It’s what people take to people’s houses after someone died, but we adopted it for Thanksgiving. It’s got canned mushroom soup and those canned fried onions. It’s one step above white-trash cooking.”

Jack Wheeler of Oxnard immediately began to describe the dish that to him evokes holidays gone by. “The thing that first pops into mind is my mother’s flawless mashed potatoes. There can’t be another word.

“Real butter, the right amount of milk, all mashed, never pureed. I never try to make them myself, of course.”

Virginia Chavez in Ventura said it is impossible for her to winnow her sentimental favorite to just one dish. “It’s two things. My cranberry jello salad, which I made up. Then, the next day, my husband, Eddie, makes turkey tacos from the leftovers. I make the tortillas, of course.

“And we always eat on the set of dishes my adopted grandmother left to me. Usually at 2 o’clock.”

Dee Volz remembers many Thanksgiving meals both in Ojai’s east end and New York City’s East Side.

“But when I was growing up it was in the city. It was the feeling, the aroma. My mother was an opera singer, and I was always treated to the last act of ‘Aida’ while the turkey cooked. There was much feeling put into it.

“That, of course, was back in the days when cooking a turkey was an all-day undertaking,” Volz continued. “I’ve been fortunate--I’ve never not had a Thanksgiving dinner. This one will make 75 Thanksgivings for me.”

Martin Henson of Oak View didn’t have to think long: “It can only be my momma’s corn-bread dressing that she mixes in a plastic washtub. It has turkey giblets and Pet milk.

“She makes everyone taste it before she bakes it. For 45 years straight, she’s worried that it will come out too dry. She never wrote the recipe down, and neither did her grandma Carter.”

The only dessert that Ann Crozier of Ojai remembers on her family’s Thanksgiving table is pecan pie.

“My mother followed my dad to Georgia during World War II. She learned how to make pecan pie there. From then on it was no more pumpkin pie for her. I’d never dream of making anything but a pecan pie.”

In Ventura, Kenmere Davidson takes the long view of the holiday, and in doing so, perhaps brings up what may be the best part of all about Thanksgiving: the leftovers.

“The first thing I think of is the turkey sandwich at midnight. White bread and a ton of mayonnaise,” she said.

“I even put leftover cranberry sauce on it. The house is quiet by then, and the kitchen is usually pretty well cleaned up. No one has ever seen me do this.”