Thanksgiving. In the United States, it’s the fourth Thursday in November, a time for gathering with family and friends. We give thanks for what we have, and we eat a delicious meal. That meal varies widely from family to family, region to region. It could be prepared at home, in its entirety, or pot luck, with celebrants bringing dishes. It can be eaten at a restaurant, or ordered from a grocery store. This month, D. Z. and Janet write about some special dishes that bring back memories and say Thanksgiving to us.
Memories of Coffee Cake and a Stuffing Recipe
D. Z. Church
There was a time when my whole family would meet on the family farm for Thanksgiving. And there were a lot of us. My father had nine siblings, and they had children and on and on. I loved those times, the old farmhouse full of laughter and the smell of good, old Midwestern cooking.
The grandmother, who lived on the farm, as opposed to the grandmother who lived with us, made thumbprint coffee cakes. This required extra heavy cream because if you are going to make a cinnamon-laden coffeecake using churned butter, why not go the extra step and add heavy cream to the mix? The concept is that once you have lined a cake pan with the pastry, you stick your thumb through it and pour the heavy cream into the resulting holes. Then bake. Hearts quailed a county over.
Once, while in graduate school in Evanston, Illinois, I drove out to the farm for the weekend. That grandmother and I had a grand time; she was a masterful storyteller and full of town gossip about the wee town our family came from. By then, she lived alone on the farm. This is why I was surprised when I got up on Sunday morning to find three freshly baked thumbprint cakes cooling on the top of the gigantic old white stove. She must have baked them before I rose. And, of course, presented one to me as I left.
Mid’s Thumbprint Cake
- Make 1 batch of your favorite sweet dough recipe
- After the 2nd rise, divide into 4-5 sections and put into 9-inch cake pans
- Let rise
- Using a floured finger, punch 30-40 holes in the dough
- Fill holes with brown sugar, heavy cream, and sprinkle cinnamon over the top of the dough
- Bake according to recipe (usually 25-35 minutes at 400 degrees)
- Take the coffee cake out of the oven and let rest for 3-5 minutes
- Refill holes with heavy cream (use the heaviest cream you can find)
I parceled it out, piece by piece, for over a week, sharing it sparingly with my apartment mate. So yummy. But, if you wish for something a bit more mundane and less heart-threatening, I include my very own recipe for turkey stuffing.
Digger’s Stuffing
¼ cup butter
½ cup diced celery with leaves
1 onion, minced
6 shallots, minced
1 clove garlic, minced
½ cup parsley, chopped
1 8-ounce package of breadcrumbs
1 pound chestnuts
½ Tablespoon sage
3 cups wild rice (cooked)
1 cup Madeira (or chicken broth)
Cook the rice (according to the package) and prepare the chestnuts the night before, refrigerate both.
- Score the chestnuts. Blanch them in a pot of boiling water for three minutes. Drain and peel. Add stock (1 cup of Madeira or chicken broth) and simmer for 20 minutes.
- Sauté celery, onion, shallot and garlic in butter.
- Add chestnuts. Add remaining stuffing ingredients.
- Mix thoroughly and stuff the bird. Can also be baked in the oven.
I think you will find this to be very tasty and the bird very tender! We used it for years, sipping Madeira as we did. The drippings from the bird, laced with the flavors of the stuffing, make great gravy. Why not try it?
Bring on the Stuffing, Turkey and Gravy on the Side
Janet Dawson
When it comes to my Thanksgiving feast, I’m a traditionalist. Turkey, of course. As for the various sides, you can keep the mashed potatoes, the candied yams and the green bean casserole. When it comes to dessert, I’m a pumpkin pie purist. Don’t care for pecan pie, it’s usually too sweet for my taste. Give me straight up pumpkin, none of that chiffon. And that better be real heavy whipped cream on top.
For the main event, it’s turkey and stuffing. I’m all about the stuffing. And the gravy that goes with it.
I don’t recall my family ever following a recipe when making stuffing. It was usually a handful of this, a sprinkle of that, let’s taste it as we go along and see where we wind up.
On my mother’s side, my family hails from Oklahoma. A little bit of southern roots to go with the western. That means, for me, stuffing is made from cornbread. Primarily cornbread, because often a stray piece of toast or the remaining heel from a loaf of bread wound up added to the mix.
Cornbread—bake a big batch the day before, always in the cast iron skillet Mom and Dad had ever since they were married. Crumble the cornbread into pieces, letting it dry out. We’d even spread it on a baking sheet and stick it in the oven to brown.
The basic stuff starts with onion, celery, garlic, sauteed in butter. Spices—salt, pepper, lots of sage. I recall taste tests to determine whether there was enough sage. We were always adding more. Finally, when the appropriate sage level is reached, a little bit of sweet to go with the savory. A chopped apple or two. A generous handful of walnuts. I’m fond of adding a handful of sweetened dried cranberries as well. Sometimes we’d add water chestnuts, to give it a little crunch. Then broth to moisten the stuffing and a couple of eggs stirred in, to bind it together.
We always cooked stuffing in the oven rather than in the bird. This makes for a crisper, crunchier stuff and that’s the way we liked it, drenched with lots of gravy.
Well, I’m getting hungry just thinking about it.
As for recipes, Mom’s go-to for any occasion was tasty, moist applesauce cake, the recipe handed down from her mother. At one point Mom submitted the recipe to one of those local recipe collections put together by cooks in the community. You could tell Mom made the cake a lot by the number of stains and blotches on that page. The applesauce was rarely canned. My parents had an apple tree in the backyard and most years the tree provided a huge harvest of tasty apples, the fruit on the higher branches keeping the birds and squirrels happy. Mom would gather apples, peel and core them, and make applesauce. Here’s the recipe for that delicious cake, good with butter, whipped cream, or just plain.
Grandma’s (and Mom’s) Applesauce Cake
¼ cup butter, room temperature
1 cup brown or white sugar, or combination of both
1 ½ cup applesauce
1 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon each ginger, nutmeg
½ teaspoon cloves
½ cup raisins
½ cup chopped walnuts
Cream butter and sugar, add applesauce, mix. Add flour, soda and spices, then raisins and walnuts. Mix well. Bake 1 ½ hour at 325 degrees in loaf pan. Let cool and enjoy!
A Place to Die For: Point Pinole, Eucalyptus and Dynamite
Janet Dawson
Point Pinole sticks out like a thumb extending northward into San Pablo Bay, the large estuary north of San Francisco Bay. It’s part of the extensive East Bay Regional Park District, which has 73 parks for residents of Alameda and Contract Costa counties. The park is a great place for walking, riding a bike, and fishing from the long pier that extends over the bay. It’s a popular site for birders, with over 100 species to be found on the park’s shores, marshland, meadows, and in the eucalyptus groves.
The park district calls Point Pinole “a place apart,” and there’s a reason for that.
In the nineteenth century, the Giant Powder Company was the first company in America to produce dynamite. While dynamite itself is fairly stable, one of its key components, nitroglycerin, is not. Giant’s first factory, established in 1868, was in San Francisco’s Glen Canyon. A year later, an explosion killed and injured several workers. Giant relocated, south of Golden Gate Park. Another serious explosion came in 1879. Giant then moved its operations to the Berkeley shoreline, near what became the Golden Gate Fields racetrack. Between 1879 and 1892, there were three more deadly explosions, resulting in 66 deaths.
Giant moved its plant again, to the place apart—Point Pinole. Stands of eucalyptus trees were planted, acting as a buffer for surrounding communities, to minimize damage in case of explosions.
The twentieth century brought rigorous safety measures. Employees wore coveralls that contained no metal (such as zippers or buttons) to prevent any random sparks. Explosives were produced by the company over the next decades until the company closed its Point Pinole operations in the early 1960s.
Nowadays, you can walk the many paths that thread through the hills and meadows of Point Pinole, look at the ruins of the old wharf, catch fish from the pier, train your binoculars on shore birds and songbirds. You can also hike past the remnants of the old explosives factory—such as bunkers and a black powder press—and think about the men and woman who worked here long ago.
Yes, women.
You’ve heard of Rosie the Riveter? A woman working at Giant Powder during WWII was called a Dynamite Dorothy.