Weird Thanksgiving Recipes from Ba, Julia, Kiernan and Sean

Today we're sharing some Thanksgiving recipes that are little out there. Offbeat, weird, and wonderful.

BA

Tamale Stuffed Turkey

Cook a chopped onion and a couple of cloves of minced garlic and 2 diced jalapenos in a stick of butter.

Add a can of creamed corn and a dozen (whatever kind you want) tamales husked and chopped up.

If it's too dry, add chicken broth until the mixture loosens.

Stuff your turkey and cook however make you happy until a thermometer reads 165 in the stuffing
(or stick the dressing in a pan and cook at 350 for an hour).


Julia

So my weird recipe for Thanksgiving comes from my dad. It's a relish plate, and people may say how is that weird?

Well, with this recipe, it's the process, not the ingredients.

Mom would ask dad to make the relish plate every year. This was her way to keep him busy after the parade but before football. It would take him an hour. When he got into his 70s, it took him two hours.

So here we go.

Take one really fancy plate. If you have a glass deviled egg plate, use this.
Open a can of jellied cranberry sauce and place it at the center of the plate as is. Unsliced.
Cut 6 gherkins into halves. Place around plate evenly. Cut 6 tiny slivers of cheddar cheese. Disperse samely. Cut carrots into matchsticks and place around. Put one black olive between gherkins and carrots, totaling six. Carve six radishes into roses. Place around cranberry sauce so by the end of the meal they're weird and purple. Fill celery with bottled old English cheese spread and use to add color to plate. Serve cold.

Now, when I married into my wife's family, I said, let Dad make the relish tray. BA said, "Sure," then watched with horror as dad went to town, slicing and dicing.

To make relish trays BA's family way:

Get 3 big trays. Open bags of chopped cauliflower and broccoli and dump on tray. Add baby carrots and cleaned radishes. Add container of ranch dip (recently homemade). Make cheese ball the size of a head of cabbage. Put in in center of second tray. Add crackers, sliced cheese and lunchmeat. On third tray, pile dill pickles (never gherkins) black and green olives, and possibly sliced bell peppers. Voila. You can see the conflict, right?

So, there you have the Talbot/Tortuga relish tray tradition. We still serve both.

Happy Thanksgiving


Kiernan

My mother’s side of the family is Italian, and even Thanksgiving dinner was served with pasta. The first course was antipasto. Plates and bowls of rolled cold cuts, olives, anchovies, peppers, and fresh bread were served. Ravioli was a second course for us, complete with a full accompaniment of meats – sausage, meatballs, braciola, pig’s skin, and chunks of beef all cooked to perfection in tomato sauce (which we Italians in New Jersey call “gravy”). Then came the turkey with all the trimmings, followed at last by dessert and fruit.

The most unusual thing I remember my aunts and mother making was liver loaf, which was served with the second course. Why anyone thought liver loaf was a must-have on Thanksgiving is beyond me, but we always had it for every holiday, beginning with Thanksgiving. Here’s the recipe if anyone has a hankering for liver in loaf form (Note: I did not keep this as a part of our holiday fare because…ew, liver).

INGREDIENTS
1 pound of beef liver, sliced and skinned
1 egg
2 tablespoons of tomato ketchup
1 small onion, chopped
1 clove of garlic, minced
1-1/2 teaspoons of salt
1/4 teaspoon of pepper
1 pound of ground pork sausage
1/2 cup breadcrumbs

INSTRUCTIONS
Put the egg and ketchup in the blender. Cut the liver in small chunks and add slowly along with the chopped onion. Add the garlic, salt, and pepper, and blend until the entire mixture is smooth.

Pour into a large bowl and add the sausage meat and breadcrumbs. Spread in a greased 9 inch loaf pan and bake at 325 degrees for one hour. Let cool, then slice and serve.


 Sean

So I usually spend Thanksgiving (the US version) with BA and Julia and one year I'd seen this recipe for bacon wrapped chicken bites and asked if we could try it. Of course they said yes - BA and Julia are the queens of encouraging my culinary adventures. It was so good, we've made it as a part of my Thanksgiving visit every year since.

You take a pound of bacon and cut each slice into three pieces. Then you cut up a couple of large chicken breasts into one inch pieces. They should all be the same size, but I can tell you from experience that none of the pieces are the same size. That's totally okay. Wrap the chicken in the bacon slices.

Next, you take a cup or so of brown sugar and mix in 3 tablespoons of chili - you can put in more or less chili depending on how spicy you like things. Roll the bacon wrapped chicken chunks in the brown sugar mix and put in a single layer on a cookie sheet.

Bake at 350 until the bacon is crispy.

These taste great warmed up. We usually make them Monday or Tuesday and then snack on them while we're cooking the rest of Thanksgiving. Now it wouldn't be Thanksgiving without them.

Visit our websites:Sean's is http://www.seanmichaelwrites.comJulia’s is http://www.juliatalbot.comBA’s is http://www.batortuga.comKiernan's is www.KiernanKelly.com
Facebook:Sean -- https://www.facebook.com/SeanMichaelWritesJulia -- https://www.facebook.com/juliatalbotauthorBA -- https://www.facebook.com/batortugaKiernan -- https://www.facebook.com/kiernan.kelly

Sean
smut fixes everything