Thanksgiving Dinner Plans

We've already planned out the week's dinners through Wednesday, so it's time to finalize plans for the big day (drum roll please, or not). For appetizers, I have a two pound bag of cooked shrimp in the freezer from that great one-day sale at Whole Foods about a week ago. I'm also planning to put together a plate of artisanal pickles, as they seem to be all the rage this year. In terms of actually cooking something, I have an ambitious plan to do two appetizers from the current issue of Cooking Light. They're from Mark Bittman and reflect his emphasis on lightening up by adding more veggies: crab and celery root remoulade and cauliflower "caviar" with frizzled prosciutto. That's the ambitious plan - reality will likely be to make only one of those two apps, substituting the wonderful smoked salmon spread that's on sale at Whole Foods for $9.99/lb for the other. Much easier to pop a prepared spread into a pretty dish (surrounded with lots of veggies, including endive as scoopers, in addition to crackers) than to make something from scratch.

For the main course, some traditions are inviolate, and that applies to my turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and gravy. The stuffing is a traditional New England one made with Bell's Seasoning. It used to be more fun when my relatives had to mail my supply, but now you can just buy it at Whole Foods in Boulder. The farthest I might tinker with the mashed potatoes would be to mash them with lowfat buttermilk and toss in a few chives to dress them up. Since those core items already contain enough carbs for a week, the veggies will emphasize lightness, completely skipping sweet potatoes this year. Two that will be on the table for sure will be iron-skillet succotash and fennel gratin with pecorino and lemon, both from the current issue of Bon Appetit. As for the succotash, how did corn come to be associated with Thanksgiving, when we've been missing Munson's wonderful local corn for many weeks now? Were the Pilgrims chowing down on decorative (aka Indian) corn? (By the way, Munson's says they'll start carrying Christmas trees at their 75th and Valmont stand starting next weekend.) A third possibility for a veggie is an intriguing one I picked up from The Bitten Word's list of 175 recipes from the current, best cooking magazines, roasted cauliflower with dates and pine nuts from The Food Network, particularly since I have a few organic dates left from when they were on sale at Whole Foods.

That pretty much does it for the main meal, and as for dessert, that will be a surprise, as friends will be bringing it.

Wishing you a happy and thankful Thanksgiving day.