Arlene’s First Thanksgiving Special from 1991 (Part 1)

Episode AH2341A – Hello, welcome to At Home today. So nice of you to join us. We really appreciate all the mail that we’ve been getting from you folks, and you folks in Chicago, and the other areas that we’re seen in, we are so thankful for your nice comments to us, and we’re glad that you’re part of our At Home family. Today we begin a part one of a two parter on preparing our Thanksgiving dinner, and I want you to come with me, I want you to take a look. This bird has been cooking, and it will be a part of our next program, where we show you how to do an old fashioned turkey. Old fashioned stuffing, turkey, and we’ll show you how to carve it, we’ll show you how to make the gravy, all of that part of it, but today we thought to start out with, we would begin by making all the side dishes that accompany a turkey dinner, and just as soon as you hear this next message, we’re going to come back, and really get started because we’ve got a lot to do today. Stay with us, we’ll be right back after this next message. Here’s today’s At Home hint. Cranberries are an excellent source of vitamin C. Look for firm, unblemished berries with a bright luster. Avoid soft, dull looking berries. If you’ve got a helpful hint that you’d like to share, we want to hear from you. Send your hint to At Home Hints, CTV, Wall, Pennsylvania 15148-1499. Okay, like I said, this is the first part of a two part series on the Thanksgiving dinner, and if you send for the recipes for what you see today, we will include the turkey part of the dinner from next week’s program in with today’s recipes. That way you’ll have enough time to get all the ingredients, if you’d like to do what we’re showing next week. So, remember that. You’ll get two weeks’ recipes, if you send for today’s recipes. Okay, first of all, we’re going to start. Candied sweet potatoes are one of the things that are tradition with my family. My mom made Thanksgiving dinner, she didn’t spend a lot of time making fancy things, because my brothers and I, and their wives, my husband, we all had special things that we would always say, “Oh, you’re going to make that for Thanksgiving. “Oh, we got to have that. “Oh, can we have that?” And so she just kind of made a basic, old fashioned, traditional Thanksgiving dinner, and all I have in my skillet here is some butter and some brown sugar that is just melting together, and what you wanna do is parboil, these are yams, and they are very… They’re as good as sweet potatoes. Either one are fine. These are more orange than a sweet potato, a yam is. So what we do is parboil them with the skins on, submerge them in the water, let them boil until a fork can be inserted, and come out nice and easy. Let them cool down, peel the skins off, and then you have this particular type of the look of the potato, and basically what you want to do, you want to cut them in chunks, because if you cut them too small, when they cook in this sauce, they’ll begin to break apart, and you don’t want that. So we just lay all of these, and you see I have quite a few here, because I have quite a few coming for Thanksgiving dinner, but the important thing is just to lay them all in there, and you need to get your fire going here, because the butter and the brown sugar, they need to blend together, and you know, if you have anything with a sugar, brown or white sugar, and you turn the fire up, it will start to crystallize, so that’s the only caution that you would have to have with this particular dish. You just have to be careful that you don’t let it crystallize, and the way you keep that from happening, is I put just a drop of water every now and then, and that really helps it a lot. Don’t worry about it if you have to double up on them, because when that starts to bubble in there, it starts to boil, it will boil up and cover all of your sweet potatoes or your yams. I think we just about have that right. I will then sprinkle an additional small amount of brown sugar over the top of these. Whoops. That’s a little bit bigger than I wanted, but we’ll just break it up. Sprinkle that all over them. Okay. And these candied, these yams will candy. What makes them candy is the butter, and the sugar together when it reaches that temperature, then they will candy. Now what I like to do, like I said, is drop just a couple of drops of water. Just over the top, not much, but that will thin down, if it starts to get thickened. Then I cover mine. Whoops, wrong lid. Let’s go for the bigger lid here. And we’ll just let that go, not too high heat, but enough to keep it going, all right? So, that’s basically all there is to candied yams, it’s not that hard, it really isn’t. I believe what I’m going to do now is switch pans here because what I have here are some cranberries. Everybody uses the traditional cranberry sauce that they buy in a can, and you can buy whole cranberry, or the jellied cranberry, and I found this recipe a couple years ago, and I made it for some friends, and they loved it, and it uses the fresh cranberries, which are at their peak now, Thanksgiving time. What I have done is taken a package of cranberries and put it in my dutch oven here. I added one cup of water, and you put that on the fire, and you let that heat through, and they’ll start to pop. When they have popped, you know that you have arrived, and they look like this. Okay, they kind of thicken themselves. Leave it on the heat. Let that get good and warm there, okay? Now the next thing we’re going to do, we drained one can of pineapple, here we have the pineapple juice. We want to add enough water to that to make one cup, okay? So, really there’s, it’s not that far out from, you almost get a cup of cranberry, I’m sorry, of pineapple juice in a large can of cranberry, and we’re going to add that. Let me make sure I’m doing this right, because this is my recipe. We will add this water to the pineapple juice, and then we’re going to add that to the cranberries, okay? Okay, now we’re going to take it off the heat, because that just, just have to add that long enough to heat it through just a little bit. Now let’s take it off the heat. Okay. Next thing we’re going to do, is we’re going to add one cup of sugar to the cranberries. Cranberries are usually very tart. If you drink cranberry juice, you know what I’m talking about. Very good for you, very rich in vitamin C, but usually very tart. So we add that to that. We stir it so we can blend it very well. Make sure that it is very well stirred, to dissolve the sugar. Next we take a package of, a large package of raspberry Jello, okay? And you can use the sugar free, you can use any, a generic brand, whatever. This is what I happen to have. You pour the Jello, dry, you don’t mix it. You pour it in there dry. Anytime you’re adding ingredients, you always mix to blend well after each one, because it just works out better that way. You don’t want something to be a clump of gelatin in one area, and it not to be very well blended, so you blend that very well. Then we add to this, we add our crushed pineapple. Okay. Remember there’s cranberries in there, there’s raspberry Jello, and here comes the crushed pineapple. Starting to look pretty good already, isn’t it? Mm hm. And to that then, we’re going to add some chopped walnuts. I bought a cup of them, and basically I don’t sit with a paring knife and chop each walnut. This is the way I do my nuts because I think this is the quickest and the easiest way. Put them out on your board, and just take a nice, broad handled and broad bladed knife, and give them a quick chop. Hold down on this end, and just chop across. You’ll be amazed at how fast you can chop walnuts, pecans, whatever you want to chop. And I said about a cup, you can add more or less. If you like walnuts, you could add a little bit more. I wouldn’t go to two cups, that would be much too much, but you could add a little bit more than the one cup if you really like walnuts. Okay, so we have given it a rough cut. All we’re going to do now is put our walnuts right into there. And even as we’re talking, this is thickening up. And as this cools, this becomes a cranberry relish that is so delicious, and what a wonderful accompaniment to our turkey, and our dressing, and the potatoes, and everything else that we’re making. So we want to be sure, mix it around very well. Okay. There we are. Now I’m going to put this into a nice dish, so that it can cool in the refrigerator, in time for our dinner. Okay. This is very easy, it’s not hard at all. It’s just cranberries, and walnuts, and pineapple, things that are good for you, and it’s a little special, because you want to make something special for the holidays. Sometimes I have a struggle with thinking, well, you know, people think that’s all the holidays are for, is to have special foods, and special this and that, and everyday is really special in a certain kind of a way, but I think it’s nice when it is a holiday to go ahead and make those special things that your family likes, and I think that if you make this cranberry relish, this is going to be one of your family’s favorites, trust me. Okay, let me put a little covering on that. And this goes into the refrigerator. If I were making this for my family, I would make this probably the day before. You don’t want to get up on Thanksgiving morning, or the day of your big dinner, and say, “Oh, well, let’s make this cranberry relish,” because I’ll tell you the truth, I don’t think it’s going to work. It needs a good chill to thicken it up, because it does have the gelatin in it. Okay so, let me check on these sweet potatoes back over here. Make sure they’re coming along. I think we better move them back to the other fire, because I think it’s a little, little hotter, and they need to get going here. Let me clean up a little bit that we have here. If you are cooking these, and you see that they haven’t… Now they’re starting to boil, that’s good. Not really boil but, can you see how they’re going to start to get brown? Can you see the bottom of those? Let me turn that around there. That’s what you’re looking for. You’re looking for a brownness to glaze over. See how that one’s doing? That’s what you’re looking for. And you have to keep an eye peeled on them, because like I said, you don’t want to just turn the fire up and have them boiling away because they’ll get mushy. They need to keep their shape, and… I think they’re going to be all right. I think we probably just need the fire up a little bit. Okay. Isn’t it something I have to keep playing with the fire? Sometimes it’s right and sometimes it isn’t. But, whoa. But it’s important to keep an eye on it, because if you’re trying to get everything prepared to be done at one time, then you have to keep going back and checking out, checking out, to make sure that it’s all working. So we have our cranberry relish. We have our candied sweet yams. Now what would Thanksgiving be without a pumpkin pie? So we’re going to move over here, and make our pumpkin pie. I think you’re going to enjoy this, because it’s a tradition. My dad really used to make us eat mincemeat when we were kids. We hated mincemeat, my brothers and I. And so one year I said to my mom, “You think instead of mincemeat, “we could have a raisin, or something like that? “If we have to eat that, “how about if we could just have something different?” So sure enough, she made the raisin, and then that got to be the tradition. We were so thankful because the mincemeat finally had taken a departure, and I know there are a lot of people that still do like mincemeat. I never understood what it was made out of, and don’t know too much about mincemeat, to tell you the truth. I remember she used to grind apples in it, though, to kind of take the tartness of it, but we still didn’t like it, so when she started to make the raisin pie, oh, that was so much better, we all felt. And so that’s become a tradition. I usually make raisin pies, and of course the traditional pumpkin. All I’m doing here is trying to make a high crust, a high ridge around my crust, because when you do pumpkin, it tends to cook up, and there is nothing worse than that smell of burned pumpkin in your oven. So you make a high crust, and you flute the edge. As we have done before when we’ve made our pies. It’s good to keep it real high, because that will hold your filling in. Okay? This is just a basic crust. And always when you make a pumpkin pie, you start out with a raw crust. You don’t prebake it like you do for cream pies, because it’s going to bake when the filling bakes, and becomes a custard. Also remember now, like I said before, we are going to offer all of the recipes that you see today, and for next week’s program, when you send today for these recipes, because we want you to have the full Thanksgiving dinner, and if you don’t… We want you to have the time to get the ingredients for it. Okay, our crust is prepared. Let’s make the filling, okay? Okay we start out with the pumpkin. Okay. And it, the recipe calls for a couple of beaten eggs. Whoop, so we’ll do that first. Sliding right out of my hand there. Isn’t this a wonderful time of year for family, and for just stopping and thinking about how blessed we are, and how thankful we should be. The fall is probably one of my most favorite times of the year, I really like the fall, but I can’t help at this time of the year just to stop and think about all the good things in my life, and why they are, you know? Good health, good relationships with family members, good friends. You know, just the things that we tend to take for granted, I always think about them at this particular time of the year, because it is Thanksgiving time, and it’s family time. I can remember Thanksgivings where my mother always would invite someone who had nobody else. There was people at our table that none of us really knew, but she knew that they would be alone, so she felt that for that particular day, she could do something about their loneliness, and she would invite them to come into our home, and we would have the Thanksgiving dinner with an unknown guest. And it was fine because, by the end of the dinner, they weren’t the unknown guest anymore, they were our friends, and very appreciative of everything that my folks had done for them. So, if you are in a situation where you know somebody that’s going to be alone, doesn’t have to necessarily be an elderly person, I’m talking about young people, many young people are alone, why don’t you invite them to your house for Thanksgiving, and let them share the joy of your family. I think that it really will make a difference in how you feel about things. I’m adding some sugar to my pumpkin and my beaten eggs. Okay. And really this is not a hard recipe. This is about 3/4 of a cup of sugar, and we’ve got our pumpkin there, and our two beaten eggs. Let’s just mix it up. Now what I like to do, is I add my… Now a lot of people like a lot of different kinds of spices in their pumpkin pie. You tend to do what you’ve been told to do as a child. If your mother does it one way, that’s kind of the way you do. Sometimes you change a little bit, but you kind of keep the basics. I use usually just ground cinnamon, because that’s what we like. And I put a lot of it in, because we like the flavor of cinnamon, and I don’t put the ginger, and the allspice, and the pumpkin pie spices. I don’t use those, because mom never did. So, but I like to mix it with my pumpkin, because I think it gets a better, gets blended better, and it gets the flavor is more evenly distributed. Okay. Mix that around. Then I take one can, a 12 ounce can of evaporated milk. We just pour that in there. Okay, takes the whole can. This is enough for one nine inch pie, and one very big nine inch pie. What I mean, it’s not skimpy in its filling. There is a lot of filling here. So now let me check these potatoes for one minute. Ha ha, they’re really going to town now. You see that? That’s what we’re looking for. They’re doing just great. They smell good too. Ah, something about brown sugar that does it for you, doesn’t it? Brown sugar and butter? This is exactly what you want. This is what you’re looking for, just what you see here. When it starts to brown like that, and starts to get thick, sticky in other words, you know that that’s the way the sweet, the candied sweet yams should look. And you have to keep turning them too. It’s really important to keep turning them, so they get evenly coated. I think they’re doing just fine here. We’ll keep an eye on them though, because sometimes they want to get away from you, and they get too sticky, and too dry, and that’s not good either. Okay, back to our pumpkin pie. The yams and the sweet potatoes, and the pumpkin are kind of in the same family, but you know, it doesn’t really matter because at Thanksgiving time, I mean that’s just tradition. Most of the times when you’re planning a menu, you wouldn’t put two of the same type of vegetables together. But this way, everybody likes, this is tradition everybody looks forward to. Now you want to mix that milk in there really, really well. Scrape that bowl, get that around. Make sure that it is totally incorporated. You see the pumpkin doesn’t get real dark when you just use cinnamon too. It stays kind of a lighter color. Okay. Stays a little lighter in color. And I think we’re just about ready here. Okay. Let me get one of my scrapers here. Okay. Now, you know I have my turkey in the oven baking, so what I would normally do at this point, I would bring my turkey out, because it’s probably almost ready to come out anyway, and I would save my pies. I would do it either one of two ways, either like I’m telling you, I would do my pies now, bring my turkey out. This is about two hours before you’re ready to eat. Do my pies because I like them fresh. Some people do them the night before, I don’t like to do them the night before. I like everything as fresh, as close to the time you’re going to eat as possible. If you don’t do it that way, I have also gotten up very early in the morning and baked my pies, and then put the turkey in, and then of course they’re done. Whatever’s most convenient for you. If you have the luxury of two ovens, you have no problem at all, but here at home, we only have one oven, so what I would do, I would go ahead and pour this in, and I would take it to the oven. Now, you’re going to bake this at 425 for about 15 minutes. Then, you’ll lower the heat in the oven to 350, and you’ll bake it then at 350 for about 40 to 45 minutes. You know a pumpkin pie is done when you can take a table knife and insert it in the center. This has a custardy texture, so you insert the knife in the center of the pie. When it comes out, and it’s perfectly clean, there is no pumpkin, no morsels hanging on it, you know it’s done. If you bring it out, and it’s got something, the mixture is still there, it’s not done. Okay, because our turkey is in the oven, we’re going to let this sit here, and we’re going to bake this in just a few minutes, but I wanted to show you one other dish before we get out of time here, and this is our vegetable dish for our Thanksgiving dinner, and it’s very easy, very simple. Basically what I have done, is I’ve taken two cans. These are the cut green beans. You can use frozen, but these are from the can. I used the canned ones today. If you want to boil some fresh ones, drain them, let them cool down, that’s fine too. Okay, but this is two large cans of green beans. To that we’re going to take one can of cream of mushroom soup. Let me get my little spatula here, and you just take the can of cream of mushroom soup. That was nice, came out nice, how about that Dale? Okay. And we clean the can out really well, you know I’m a stickler for that. Okay. And you’re going to mix that with the beans. Mix it real well. Okay. Just mix it around, thoroughly. Okay. We’ll add some salt and pepper to this. Not a lot, but just enough to flavor it down. Good fresh black pepper. They’re kidding me about always talking about my salt and pepper, and then we salt and pepper it, not too much. Oh, and look at this ground pepper. But I really like ground pepper, and I think it enhances, and okay we’ve got our pepper in there. You see that? Okay, you want to start, you want to make this in a oven-proof bowl. I mean you can just mix it together, and you don’t have to make it in one, and put it in another. It could all be mixed in one. Then, this is just grated Parmesan cheese. Spread those out a little bit. Okay. Grated Parmesan cheese, we’ll put on the top. Okay. Quite a bit there, because that’s what’s going to make it taste good. And breadcrumbs, we need some breadcrumbs. Let’s see, I think I have some here, yes I do. Okay. We’re going to just sprinkle some breadcrumb over top of the Parmesan cheese. Okay. Just a little bit, not a lot. Those are unflavored breadcrumbs too. You could use the flavored, but then we take some butter, or oil, whichever, usually butter, and just put a few pats here and there on the top of these. Now this is going to bake in a 350 oven for probably about 1/2 hour to 40 minutes. I wouldn’t cover it, because when that starts to bake, it’s wonderful, because it gets a crust on the top, it gets nice and brown. So you would not want to cover that. Then you take this, these are french fried onion rings, and you just sprinkle them on the top. That makes it crispy. I won’t use the whole can. If you’re making for a crowd you would, but that’s basically it. Put this in the oven like I said. Bake it at 350 degrees for about 25 to 35 minutes, somewhere along in there. You have your vegetable. Let’s check it out again. Our green bean casserole. We’ve got our pumpkin pie. We’ve got our cranberry salad that’s cooling and chilling down in the refrigerator. And let’s see what our potatoes are doing over here. Ah, they look wonderful. They’re getting there. Now remember, we’re going to be back with part two next week, on how to clean a turkey, how to make a good old fashioned stuffing, and we’re going to show you how to carve your turkey. Sometimes that’s the most disastrous part of the whole Thanksgiving meal is someone trying to cut this poor turkey, so everybody can have a piece of meat, just don’t know how to do it. We’re going to do that on our next program, and remember you can have the recipes for both today’s program and next week’s program, if you’ll just write to us today, and we’re going to tell you in just a few minutes how you can receive those, what the address is. Our potatoes are doing beautifully. See how nice and, they’re getting coated. We’d let those cook for just a little bit longer, just so that we can have that sticky, sugary taste over all of them. Everything’s coming along fine. Let’s take a look at the turkey. I think the turkey’s looking… Oh, look at that, nice and brown, just the way we like it. Now, we’re going to be back now, so please stay tuned for part two next week, on how to make a stuffed roast turkey for Thanksgiving.

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