Thanksgiving made fairly easy

By Judith Lerner12:00AM / Wednesday, November 24, 2004Print Story | Email Story

The holiday centers on family, home and community. Many people spend the holiday sharing with friends or with community acquaintances. If you are lucky enough to have close family, it is about loving them and being thankful for them, with all their quirks. Thanksgiving is not a public holiday. It is a kitchen and dining room celebration of aromas and savory, familiar flavors. Here in New England, it is not necessary to serve whipped sweet potatoes with coconut meringue or cumin-and cilantro-scented anything. Simple, old fashioned food traditions work wonderfully. Thanksgiving is absolutely the day for comfort foods. Nothing fancy is needed. Thanksgiving is another harvest festival. If the ingredients are good or are great, the simplest preparation shows them off best. It is already the day before big Turkey Day. If you are cooking, roasting, baking or hosting a dinner tomorrow and it isn't yet organized, here's what you can do to have a magnificent feast: How often do you get chestnuts? Simple roasted chestnuts â€” a pound for four people â€” can bring the outdoors to your table. Do not forget to score the chestnuts before you put them in the oven. What's a good first course? An autumn salad: bitter chicory layered with cucumber slices, orange juice soaked pear chunks, toasted walnuts and blue cheese, all sprinkled with sea salt, freshly ground pepper, a clove or two of pressed or minced fresh garlic, a finely minced jalapeÃ±o if you like, some good olive oil, balsamic vinegar, lemon, lime or orange juice and some cider vinegar. No room for soup. Make cornbread as muffins. Have sweet butter, applesauce or butter to spread. I like to drink a punch of fresh, local cider from Bartlett's, Jaeschke's, Lakeview or Windy Hill Orchards, mixed with plain, unflavored seltzer. Use ginger ale if you like something sweeter. A 12-ounce container of fresh whole cranberries cooked in water or orange juice to cover with half a cup of maple syrup or brown sugar are perfect. Add a few whole cloves and a cinnamon stick if you want. I don't. Make it this evening and chill. Or serve hot. One container will serve up to six people. On Bird Day: Unless you are a vegetarian, start with bird: traditional turkey, a flavorful capon, a roasting chicken, crisp duck. Stuff with brown or wild rice, onion rings, fresh basil, cranberries and orange chunks moistened with dry or not-so-dry red wine (this dressing will self-baste in the rich duck, a goose, a simple whole small chicken or a Cornish hen). Make it a good bird, one that has lots of flavor. If itâ€™s not too late, you should skip birds with pop-up buttons. If roast chicken or Cornish hen â€” not their mere, pathetic, naked, embarrassing boneless breasts â€” are on a restaurant menu, I often order it to learn the quality of the kitchen. Berkshire Coop Market in Great Barrington will still have organic or natural turkeys, chickens and ducks from Stone Church Farm and Lakeville Growers today. Wild Oats Food Coop in Williamstown still has Misty Knoll fertile free-range chickens; maybe even some turkeys. Loeb's Foodtown in Lenox may still have some Plainville turkeys as may both Guido's â€” which also has Murray's chickens, Brome Lake ducks, some capons (a delicious childhood holiday memory) and frozen geese. Clearwater Natural Foods in Lenox has frozen organic or natural chickens and turkeys. And Otis Poultry Farm in Otis has Cornish hens, roasting chickens, turkeys, capons, ducks and geese. Big Y is carrying natural chickens and Miller Farm natural turkeys. They have frozen ducks, geese and Empire Kosher turkeys. Price Chopper still has Amish natural chickens and frozen Empire hen turkeys. Stop & Shop has Bell & Evans and Springer Mountain natural chickens and Bell & Evans turkeys, as well as frozen Empire Kosher turkeys (and Cornish hens at Dan Fox Drive). Kosher birds are already brined. See below. So you do not have to settle for a chlorine-washed, fishmeal-fed tasteless commercial chicken or turkey, even if you only begin thinking about Thanksgiving dinner right now. Okay. Frozen. It takes days to thaw a turkey in your refrigerator. Get the smallest one you can find â€” or two if you need a lot of meat. Place the bird still in its wrappings in a pail of room-temperature water as soon as you get it home. It will thaw in â€“ well, hopefully, it will thaw in time to roast tomorrow. If you have time â€” overnight or four to 12 hours â€” marinate or brine your bird at refrigerator temperature so it will be moist and delicious. Submerge the bird in a 3-gallon (or more) pail of water mixed with salt. Use 1 gallon of water to 1 cup kosher salt or to 1/2 cup table salt. Add a cup of freshly squeezed citrus, cranberry or other fruit juice, half a cup of maple syrup, a bottle or white wine, crushed garlic cloves, squashed citrus quarters with their rinds, plenty of your favorite fresh poultry herbs: bay leaves, marjoram, rosemary, sage and thyme. Soak for 12 to 18 hours. Or use a ratio of 1 gallon water to 2 cups kosher salt or 1 cup table salt for four to six hours. Keep the brining bird cool in a big cooler or out on the porch. Do not brine an already salted kosher or self-basting bird. A duck or goose better benefits from the Chinese dry-air-cooling in front of a fan on the porch for six to 18 hours. The skin roasts to wonderful crispness. Rinse and dry your brined or unbrined bird before roasting. Bake any stuffing separately for speed. Rub or brush bird â€” except a fat duck or goose â€” with butter inside and out, even under the skin if you wish. Place an unpeeled, cut up apple, carrot, celery, garlic, onion and herb stalks inside bird cavity. A brined bird does not need additional salt. Roast bird at 325 degrees for 20 minutes per pound, or 425 degrees for 2 hours, turning from side to side and basting with pan juices every half hour, (or, for small birds, for 1 hour, turning every 15 minutes). Pour off any accumulating fat so it does not begin to smoke. While the bird is roasting, simmer chopped giblets and the neck with chopped garlic, onion, bay leaf, marjoram, sage and thyme in water or wine until all is soft. SautÃ© the liver briefly. Mash and add to giblet mixture off heat. Whisk this, chunks and all, into the pan juices to make a thin or flour or cornstarch-thickened gravy. More white wine, simmered, is a good gravy addition. What else to serve? How often do people cook at home anymore? Simple 2-to-3-minute boiled â€” no, not steamed â€” broccoli stalks or flowerets are very sweet. Sprinkle with brown butter or toasted, chopped walnuts if you like, but itâ€™s not necessary. Or try cauliflower flowerets baked until soft, maybe half an hour in the oven with the turkey; then sprinkled with soft cheese and put back in the oven until it melts. What else? Fresh peas or snow peas, briefly sautÃ©ed. Whole stringbeans or asparagus spears in a scant bit of water and butter, sautÃ©ed for about 20 minutes in a pan and served with butter and lemon, maybe some toasted almonds or walnuts. Steamed Brussels sprouts with or without baby onions. No extra seasoning needed. The turkey or capon will have herbs and wine. The salad will be spicy. As for mashed potatoes, I make everything in one pot. I scrub and cut up unpeeled baking potatoes. You decide how many. I put them in a pot on top of a bed of chopped onions. I cover the top with chopped fresh garlic, a good amount of butter, sea salt and freshly ground pepper to taste and cover all with whole milk. I bring gently to a boil, lower the heat and simmer until the potatoes are soft and the onions are a bit browned. The milk will have curdled but this does not matter. Mash everything as-is in the pot. Leave lumps or not as you like. This is the season of squashes, sweet potatoes and roots. Halved acorn or butternut squashes baked face down on a buttered pan or face up with their cavities filed with butter and maple syrup, while simple, are appropriate. Bake some whole or 1-inch slices of sweet potato until soft. If you want something different, paint the sweet potato slices with a mixture of miso (salty soybean paste) and apple butter. Or just place a slice of cored, unpeeled apple on the sweet potato slice and dot with butter. Slices bake in about 15 minutes. They tend to char quickly because of their high sugar content. Desserts? Pie. Or crisp. A pie without a homemade butter or lard crust is not worth eating. If you do not make a crust, just make a crisp or simple baked, sliced fruit â€” apples, bananas, berries, grapes, pears, even orange, tangerine or grapefruit sections â€” topped with chopped nuts, butter, oats and maple syrup. However, here's how to make any dessert pie in a double crust â€” easy as pie. Easy enough to be made by children. Earlier this year, I watched the students of Mount Everett High School culinary arts teacher Odille Carpenter squish pound chunks of from-the-refrigerator butter with their surgical-gloved hands into huge bowls of salted flour. They then squished the flour and butter together to crumblike texture. They sprinkled on ice water until the dough barely held together. Gathered into a ball. Divided. Flattened. Floured top. Rolled without chilling on a well floured table. Fitted into pie pans. Fluted as well as they were able. Filled. Topped with second crust or lattice strips or crumb topping or no topping. Rolled top crust edges under by hand where necessary and refluted. Baked at 375 to 400 degrees for 30 to 45 minutes. Voila! Even I, a piecrust klutz, could see it was easy. Fast. No big deal. They made and baked eight pies in an hour and a half. I would make open faced pies for tomorrow. Just make two. You can even make the crust right in a pie pan. Divide it in half. Press it into the pan with your fingers. Pre-bake crusts 10 to 12 minutes. Then brush well with an egg yolk beaten with a pinch of salt and rebake a minute or two to glaze inside so filling will not sink into your lovely homemade crust and make it soggy. After fillings are in crusts, sprinkle fruit of your choice with a bit of sugar, honey or maple syrup and dot with bits of butter â€” or not, as you like. Add and toss spices or extracts â€” sparingly, or not at all. Your homemade pie with really great fruit or nuts will be loved very simply. We hope. Maybe a dollop of High Lawn Farm whipped heavy cream or even unwhipped just poured beside. Or excellent vanilla ice cream. Simple. Apples and pears are fragrant and delicious as is, although I might toss in a teaspoon of vanilla extract or freshly grated lemon or orange rind. I might drizzle some honey or maple syrup on raspberries or cherries. Pile fruits very high. It will sink very much as it bakes. Place pie pans on foil or a baking sheet with sides to save your oven. I'd toast pecans or walnuts â€” 2 1/2 to 3 cups for a 9-inch pie â€” in a 350 degree oven for about 10 minutes or until you can smell them. Cover them barely with 1/2 to 1 1/2 cups maple syrup well beaten with three eggs. Place pie pans on a baking tray to catch inevitable drips. Youâ€™ve got the method. I give you the ingredients for one double-crust piecrust created by Mount Everett culinary arts teacher, Odille Carpenter: 2 cups flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1 cup butter, 1/4 cup or less ice water (start with 2 tablespoons). Judith Lerner is The Advocateâ€™s food columnist.

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Lanesborough Fifth-Graders Win Snowplow Name Contest

02:13PM / Tuesday, December 23, 2025

LANESBOROUGH, Mass. — One of the snowplows for Highway District 1 has a new name: "The Blizzard Boss."

The name comes from teacher Gina Wagner's fifth-grade class at Lanesborough Elementary School.

The state Department of Transportation announced the winners of the fourth annual "Name A Snowplow" contest on Monday.

The department received entries from public elementary and middle school classrooms across the commonwealth to name the 12 MassDOT snowplows that will be in service during the 2025/2026 winter season.

The purpose of the contest is to celebrate the snow and ice season and to recognize the hard work and dedication shown by public works employees and contractors during winter operations.

"Thank you to all of the students who participated. Your creativity allows us to highlight to all, the importance of the work performed by our workforce," said interim MassDOT Secretary Phil Eng.

"Our workforce takes pride as they clear snow and ice, keeping our roads safe during adverse weather events for all that need to travel. ?To our contest winners and participants, know that you have added some fun to the serious take of operating plows. ?I'm proud of the skill and dedication from our crews and thank the public of the shared responsibility to slow down, give plows space and put safety first every time there is a winter weather event."

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