brandy – Life In A Word

It’s Thanksgiving Season (#3)

Earlier this week the first Christmas card arrived in the mail. For heaven’s sake it’s not even November 25th, people. Then we stopped by Chick-fil-A and my wife asked if they had their Peppermint Chip milkshake, which of course they did because it’s “Christmas season”. Finally, we’re seeing strings of colored lights and decorations on houses already. Am I losing the battle of the Thanksgiving season with a full week still to go? Maybe I need a different tack with my campaign.

Let’s talk about Thanksgiving dishes today. Are yours made of pottery, wood, metal, or glass? Oh, you thought I meant food. Well, yes, I do, but somehow we’ve stretched the definition of “any container used at the table” to also mean what’s in or on that container. So let’s talk about that. Have a favorite dish at Thanksgiving? Of course you do; everybody does. In fact, the better question is, if your Thanksgiving “dish” is a “favorite” then why don’t you serve it all year round?

Here are my three favorite Thanksgiving dishes for your consideration:

Stuffing. Nine out of ten Thanksgiving stuffing recipes never made it into the bird in the first place. Okay so I made that up, but I find it funny when a food that is “inside” by definition was never, ever inside. Whatever. Stuffing used to be that little pile of gently-spiced spongy material sitting benignly aside your helping of turkey. I’d ignore it or push it around a little but most of this autumn pillow fluff never made it onto my fork. Then I met my wife. You could hibernate for an entire holiday season on my wife’s stuffing recipe. It starts with ground sirloin and pork sausage and a whole lot of butter. It ends with a ton of seasonings and spices, including sage and something called “parsley” (more on that later). Forget the turkey… if a food ever deserved to be called “main course” it’s my wife’s stuffing recipe.

Cranberry sauce. Is there a more wasted food on earth than cranberry sauce? Seriously, this poor little enhancement sees the light of day only once a year, where it sits on your plate for the length of the meal before being scraped mercilessly into the kitchen trash. How many people really make the perfect Thanksgiving “bite” – a combo of turkey, stuffing, and cranberry sauce? Not many. I think cranberry sauce was created to brighten an otherwise autumn-colored “dish”. Chateaubriand has its Béarnaise sauce. Lamb has its mint jelly. Turkey seems to acknowledge cranberry sauce as a garnish at best: something ornamental instead of “food”.

Speaking of garnishes, can we all agree parsley is the perfect example of one? Yes, you’re adding color to the plate, but don’t you always wonder what you’re supposed to do with those little green trees? Just like the colorful toothpicks you sometimes find holding your sandwich together, parsley is the first thing you remove (at least cranberry sauce rides out the plate for the entire meal). Parsley is transported from wherever it invaded your plate (and what the heck is it doing in my wife’s stuffing, anyway?) to your bread plate, where it lays until its ultimate demise. The relevance of parsley to the Thanksgiving meal (and to any “dish” for that matter) remains a mystery. One I don’t have time for in this post.

Mince pie. We conclude my favorites with the most underappreciated, over-carb’d dessert of them all. Mincemeat pie really did include meat back when the Pilgrims were celebrating Thanksgiving with swans and seals, but eventually someone (who deserves a medal) thought to remove the meat and add a whole lot of sugar to the chopped dried fruit, distilled spirits, and Thanksgiving spices. The result is a pie that is scrumptious in some books (mine) and a veritable construction material in others (everyone else’s). Seriously, this stuff is a brick. It’s like pecan pie – or concrete – only ten times as dense. And don’t forget to soften the blow with a little brandied hard sauce on top. The spiked whipped cream is so good my wife skips the pie and has a dollop of the sauce instead. But if you ask me, she’s missing out on the real dessert.

Your Thanksgiving dinner will no doubt include a favorite “dish” or two this season (glass? metal?) which should also make you wonder why you don’t eat it more often. Is it because the Thanksgiving season is special, and you don’t want to dilute the magic by having your favorites year-round? Yes, I think that’s the reason. Thanksgiving deserves its own “dishes”… and it’s own season. So c’mon, get grateful already!

Some content sourced from the Delish article, “50 Traditional Dishes You Need For The Ultimate Thanksgiving Menu” (mince pie is conspicuously absent from the list). The parsley rant is a loving shout-out to my sister-in-law.

Saving (the) Daisy

“Daisy” the St. Bernard (photo courtesy of Wasdale Mountain Rescue Team)

Let’s visit the dog days of summer; specifically, a day in the middle of last week. In England, on the highest mountaintop in the land, a group of sixteen rescuers carried an ailing dog down to safety – a rescue operation of more than five hours. These heroes didn’t rescue just any dog; they rescued a full-grown St. Bernard. Put that image in your head for a moment. People coming to the rescue of a St. Bernard. That’s “Role Reversal” with capital R’s.

(photo courtesy of Wasdale Mountain Rescue Team)

“Daisy” – the St. Bernard in our story – was descending England’s Scafell Pike last week (owners in tow, presumably) when she experienced pain in her rear legs and refused to go any further. Rescuers consulted a veterinarian before administering meds, food, water, and treats (lots of treats). Then they loaded the 121-lb. doggie onto a stretcher and eased their way down the mountain, navigating several steep stretches, rocks, and a waterfall. Daisy was the model patient the whole way down and it turns out this was her second rescue. Her first was by her owners, from a relatively “hard life” into a better one just a few months ago.

Saving Daisy strikes a chord with me not just because she’s a feel-good story (and we need plenty of those these days), but also because my wife and I own a St. Bernard ourselves. “Remy” is six years old and lives with us on our ranch, alongside horses, cats, and occasional wildlife. Remy came from a breeder in Nebraska about six hours to the east. He joined our family when he was only eight weeks old. Look at him now!

When I read about Daisy’s rescue my first thought was, “how the heck did a St. Bernard get to the top of a mountain? To explain, St. Bernards have typical dog gears like sprint, walk, and idle. The difference: Daisy and Remy spend 95% of their time in “idle” lying down. Yes, they can “sprint”, but only for about thirty seconds (followed by “collapse”). They can also walk short distances – say, to the mailbox – but like Daisy, when they choose to “idle” you’re not gonna get ’em to move an inch. Daisy is a svelte 121 lbs. so maybe she has more gas in the tank than most. Remy is 160 lbs. Our first St. Bernard “Sebastian” was well over 200. They don’t call ’em “gentle giants” for nothing.

A St. Bernard and a mountaintop isn’t an unusual combination, of course. These big boys were originally bred to be Alpine rescue dogs by monks on the Great St. Bernard Pass between Switzerland and Italy (hence the name). It is said St. Bernards rescued 2,000 people over a span of 200 years from Alpine snowstorms. I’d say they’ve earned their reputation as rescuers (and working-class dogs).

Nope, they don’t carry a barrel of brandy

We named our dog “Remy” after Remy Martin, the cognac variety of brandy. Perhaps you’ve seen images of St. Bernards with barrels of brandy around their necks. As romantic as it sounds – a big furry rescue dog bringing stiff drinks to avalanche survivors for warmth – the whole idea is just folklore. Even the Great St. Bernard Pass monks say they’ve never put a barrel on a Bernard.

St. Bernards weigh fifty pounds at twelve weeks

If Daisy’s anything like Remy, her owners make accommodations atypical of most dog owners. A water bowl isn’t big enough for a Bernard; better go with a bucket. Add a large waterproof mat under the bucket because it seems one-third of every slurp ends up on fur or floor. For those (very short) walks, forget the leash and go with a heavy rope instead (we use a horse’s lead line). Also, you’ll need a doggie ramp for the car because Bernards aren’t so agile. While you’re at it, trade the car in for one with a high ceiling clearance. And be sure to crank the AC so all the panting doesn’t fog the windows.

St. Bernards are classified as “working dogs”; a tribute to their rescue skills. They compete in dog shows like other breeds, but less in agility and more in carting and weight-pulling. St. Bernards have starred on the silver screen, as the good (“Beethoven”), the bad (“Cujo”), and the animated (“Nana” in the Disney version of Peter Pan). I think Daisy’s story might be an even better “Incredible Journey” script, don’t you? After all, St. Bernards have been rescuing people for thousands of years. Now we finally get one asking for our help. It’s about time the shoe was on the other foot (er, paw). Glad you’re okay, Daisy!

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Little Jack Horner

Behold the Thanksgiving feast. Turkey and stuffing – a meal unto itself. String beans with mushrooms, dripping in butter. Crescent rolls (because you can never have enough carbs at Thanksgiving). Every side dish imaginable, or at least enough to fill up the empty spaces on the table. And then there’s dessert. Homemade cookies and cakes. Pies galore – pumpkin, apple, and cherry. And way over in the corner – completely overlooked like a little kid begging for attention – mince pie.

I love mince pie. It’s an exorbitance of flavors, provided you like the ingredients of course: raisins, dried apples, and molasses, blended with generous helpings of cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg; topped off with two or three shots of brandy. For the spices alone – which were said to represent the gifts brought to Jesus by the three kings – mince pie is sometimes referred to as Christmas Pie. But early Americans didn’t celebrate Christmas, so mince pie made it to the Thanksgiving table instead.

Mince pie has a colorful history. The Brits get credit for the pie itself, but the Middle East gets credit for the fruits and spices, discovered by European crusaders on their travels and returned to their various homelands. Mince pie was originally a dinner pie – meat included – with the spices added to hide the sometimes “off” taste of meat without refrigeration. Over time the meat was left out entirely so only the fruit and spices remained. The pie literally morphed from savory to sweet (and from “mincemeat” to just “mince”). At one time mince pie was banned from dinner tables, frowned on as a religious symbol by Puritan authorities. I’m glad I don’t live in a time of Puritan authorities.

If you’re looking to salvage a few calories as you roam the Thanksgiving buffet, don’t go anywhere near mince pie. Were you to consume the whole pie you’d be talking 3,600 calories, and that doesn’t even include the essential topper of brandied cream (“hard sauce”). Were you to only eat the filling you’d still take in almost 400 grams of carbohydrate and 250 grams of sugar. But you’d take in no fat and almost no protein. It’s like consuming a concrete block. If someone threw you in the East River after a generous helping of mince pie you’d sink to the bottom in nothing flat.

More trivia about mince pie:

An eating competition was held in 2006 where the winning contestant ate 46 mince pies (not 46 whole pies but rather the smaller tarts you see in the photo above).
Mince pies were originally coffin-shaped (not round), but they just called them “rectangular” because coffins hadn’t been invented yet.
Early versions of mince pie contained a total of thirteen ingredients – symbols of Christ and his disciples. Another reason those pesky Puritans considered the pie “forbidden fruit”.

Making mince pie is quite the chore. Take a pie shell, dump in a jar of mince filling, top with another pie shell, and bake at 425 degrees for thirty minutes. To be honest, the hardest part of making mince pie is finding the jar of mince. Your local supermarket may carry it but they usually hide it deep in the lowest shelves of the baking aisle (are they embarrassed to carry it?) One time I found a jar that looked dusty and dated, as if it had been back there since the last Thanksgiving. Another time the checker humiliated me by saying, “No one ever buys this stuff. Why would anyone ever buy this stuff.” Well, I buy this stuff, pal. Because I like mince pie.

Mother Goose rhymed: Little Jack Horner, Sat in the corner, Eating a Christmas pie. That’s me. I’m Jack on Thanksgiving. And I’m sweet on mince pie.