Elaine Ambrose

Bestselling Author, Ventriloquist, & Humorist

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#Thanksgiving

Don’t Take Photos in Public Restrooms

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Grocery shopping is at the top of my list of “Things Never to Do During Thanksgiving Week.” Of course, I seldom obey my own rules, so I was at the store on the afternoon before Thanksgiving squeezing my laden cart through the aisles full of intense people all in a mad frenzy to spend hundreds of dollars so they could work several hours to prepare food some guests wouldn’t like in order to give thanks.

I was half done with my long list when my body betrayed me as it usually does during stressful times. I had to go to the bathroom. I maneuvered my cart close to the restroom and parked it near the door, hoping no one would take the cans of water chestnuts because they were too difficult to find. In a hurry to finish my business and return to shopping, I accidentally dropped my precious list into the toilet.

Under normal circumstances, I would have flushed away my problems, but I needed that list. I still could read the words but didn’t want to reach in and pull out a soggy piece of paper, so I did the next best thing: I took a photograph on my cell phone. Yes, I did.

I continued shopping while focusing on the photo of the essential items. I found everything except a spice identified with a complicated name. I needed the spice for a new recipe. A busy store employee dashed by, and I grabbed his arm and showed him the photo on my phone.

“Do you know where I can find this?” I asked.

The employee stared at my phone and then at me and back at the phone.

“Do you need to find the restroom?” he asked, backing away.

I looked at my phone and there it was: a photo of a toilet bowl. Apparently, he assumed the floating list was used toilet paper. I stammered apologies and quickly pushed my cart to the next aisle, almost wiping out a senior citizen riding a travel scooter. I decided I didn’t want the spice with the fancy name.

While waiting in the checkout line, I frantically tried to delete the photo from my cell phone. Somehow in my flustered desperation, I accidentally posted it to my public Instagram Account. I regularly post photos to Instagram, so it was a natural habit.

“Oh, no!” I wailed. “I just showed my toilet on the Internet!”

As I was pounding the delete button on the now-public photo, a kind customer service representative came over and pushed my cart to a special checkout line. She spoke in a soothing voice usually reserved for manic shoppers in need of medication. I finally deleted the photo, paid for the groceries, and found my car. As I drove away, I waved farewell to the grocery store. I can never return.

Next time, I’ll chose a short shopping list.

I’ll Take Turkey Over Tofu, Thank You!

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Roast stuffed chicken with vegetables

Thanksgiving is next week and I’m not flummoxed about what to fix. I’m a true admirer of tradition, so I’ll stuff a fresh turkey with dressing that contains only bread cubes, celery, butter, water chestnuts and fresh herbs and spices. I’ll baste it with more butter as it roasts in the oven, and then I’ll be profoundly thankful to share and eat it.

House thanksgiving 2013

I’m not a huge fan of creative changes to standards recipes. Feel free to enjoy baked tofu and cauliflower, but I’ll choose the real mashed potatoes, thank you. Bon Appétit‘s website, always offers alterations to traditional holiday dishes. A current article includes recipes for cranberry wasabi (nope) and a red wine gravy reduction over a popular green bean recipe (double nope). My only wine reduction will come from my glass into my mouth.

I admire people who can concoct tantalizing new dishes and incorporate different ingredients to create new, delicious recipes. I’ll even try some vegetarian, gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free, low-carb, non-alcoholic and low-fat meals, but please don’t criticize me when I finish my customary Thanksgiving feast with a platter of warm pecan pie with soft ice cream and a glass of wine. I just want to remain true to my heritage.

For Christmas Eve, I always prepare prime rib, rubbed with curry, fresh garlic, ginger and course black pepper. I serve it with poppy seed potatoes, as I have for the past 20 years. There won’t be any deviations from these two recipes, but others are welcome to bring something new and fancy. We’ll enjoy every bite.

I get a bit emotional around the holidays when my family comes together for meals, and this year we’ll have an empty chair at the table. But there will be commotion at the kid’s table, and the adults will vie for the last turkey leg. It’s traditional.

Recipe for Pecan Pie and Keeping it Real

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M beater

 

Pecan pie with real whipped cream has little nutritional value, but it makes my family happy and I’ve made the same recipe for the past 30 Thanksgiving feasts. An added pleasure is to see the joy on my granddaughter’s face as she licks the beaters, just as her mother did decades ago.

I use Dear Abby’s Pecan Pie recipe with real whipped cream. If you’re going to blow 3,254 calories on a pie, you might as well top it off with the good stuff. Besides, have you read the ingredients found in the most popular frozen whipped topping?

Cool Whip Original is made of water, hydrogenated vegetable oil, high fructose corn syrup, skimmed milk, light cream, sodium caseinate, natural and artificial flavors, xanthan, guar gums, polysorbate 60, sorbitan monostearate, and beta carotene. The aerosol version also contains nitrous oxide as a propellant. Why would you want to give this to your family?

For perfect whipped cream, all you need is a carton of whipping cream, a splash of real vanilla, some real sugar, and a mixer. Refrigerate a metal bowl for a few hours and then whip the cream for several minutes with the mixer. As you mix, add the vanilla and sugar. Beat until it’s thick enough to smother a piece of pie and then give the beaters to the kids and watch their happy faces. And, there’s not a lick of sorbitan monostearate to be found!

Here is Dear Abby’s Pecan Pie recipe:

One pie shell for 9” pie – make your own or find one in your grocer’s refrigerated section.

In a large bowl, mix together:

1 Cup of white corn syrup

1 Cup of dark brown sugar

1/3 Cup melted butter

3 eggs, mixed with fork

1+ Cup of pecans (I always add more pecans)

Splash of vanilla

Pinch of salt

 

Sprinkle both sides of pie dough with a bit of flour and place in a 9” pie pan. Cover edges with foil so they won’t burn. Bake 45 minutes at 350 degrees, removing foil 10 after 35 minutes.

Cool and serve with real whipped cream.

For brave cooks who want to make pie crush from scratch, here’s Grandma Evelyn’s recipe for a 9” pie:

Combine 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons flour, 1 teaspoon salt, and 1/3 cup oil. Mix with fork until crumbly. Add 2 tablespoons ice-cold water. Mix lightly. Form into a ball and roll out on waxed paper. Lift paper over pie pan, make fluted edge, fill, and bake. To bake unfilled, prick bottom of crust and bake 450 degrees for 10 minutes.

This Thanksgiving season, I’m grateful that my family came together to share laughter, hugs, and good food. We continued important traditions for our children and their children, and we ended the festivities with pecan pie and whipped cream. Now, I have a year to work off the calories so we can do it all over again. Just keeping it real.

 

 

Six Silly Thanksgiving Memories of Mom

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mom pumpkin

My mother died on November 1, so this is our first Thanksgiving without her. To make the occasion less painful, I’ve decided to think of funny things she used to do before dementia took her away. For space constraints, the long list has been pruned to only six memories.

  1. Turkey pudding. My mother overcooked the Thanksgiving turkey for two days. For some reason, she thought she was a pilgrim doing a slow-roast over a pit behind the covered wagon so she set the bird in the oven before midnight on low heat and basted it every hour. As a result, she was tired by dinner the next day and the turkey had lost all its shape as the butterball morphed into turkey pudding hanging off the carcass.
  2. Sinking the gravy boat. Because the turkey took all the space in the oven, she cooked the green bean casserole, the potatoes, the gravy, and the stuffing on the stove – all at the same time. She wrapped bread rolls in tin foil and stuffed them around the turkey until they hardened into crusty dough balls. When the gravy was thick enough to stand on its own without a pan, it was time to eat.
  3. Death by sugar. Mom thought there should be a dessert per person. If a dozen guests were coming for dinner, there would be at least four pies, four cakes, and four platters of fudge. Pants and belts were adjusted accordingly.
  4. Cutest cook ever. She required real whipped cream on the pies, so she would aggressively operate her trusty hand mixer like a frantic high-speed drill until the cream was two seconds shy of becoming real butter. She wore a festive, handmade apron over her best holiday sweatshirt, so she resembled a jolly, plump elf scurrying about the kitchen.
  5. Pilfering the pie. My mom loved my aunt’s sweet potato pie and assumed it was a healthy dish because it used a vegetable, despite the butter, brown sugar, pecans, and marshmallow sauce. She would sneak a bowl for herself and hide it behind the pickles in the back of the refrigerator. She later grinned with delight about her sneaky accomplishment.
  6. Her signature dishes. Like a dutiful drill sergeant, she organized the girls and women-folk to hand-wash all the dishes after the meal while the men meandered to the living room to pat their bellies and watch football. She took great pride in dividing leftovers into equal portions and filling Tupperware containers and Corningware dishes for guests to take home. To insure her items were identified and returned, she used fingernail polish to paint her initials on all the containers. I now have stacks of dishes sporting faded red initials “LA.”

This Thanksgiving, the family will come together to toast the holiday and give thanks for our abundant blessings. Some things will remain the same: commotion will come from the children’s table, the men will wrestle for the last turkey leg, and I will declare that red wine goes with turkey – and everything else. The most noticeable difference will be the empty chair at the table. Happy Thanksgiving, Mom. Maybe I’ll sneak a bowl of sweet potatoes for you. Thanks for the funny memories.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Please Pass the Potatoes

By

thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is next week and I’m not flummoxed about what to fix: I’m a true admirer of tradition so I’ll stuff a fresh turkey with dressing that contains only bread cubes, celery, butter, water chestnuts, and fresh herbs and spices. I’ll baste it with more butter as it roasts in the oven, and then I’ll be profoundly thankful to share and eat it.

I’m not a huge fan of creative changes to standards recipes. Feel free to enjoy baked tofu and cauliflower, but I’ll choose the real mashed potatoes, thank you. Bon Appétit, http://www.bonappetit.com, always offers alterations to traditional holiday dishes. A current article includes recipes for cranberry wasabi (nope) and a red wine gravy reduction over a popular green bean recipe (double nope.) My only wine reduction will come from my glass into my mouth.

I admire people who can concoct tantalizing new dishes and incorporate different ingredients to create new, delicious recipes. I’ll even try some vegetarian, gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free, low-carb, non-alcoholic, and low-fat meals, but please don’t criticize me when I finish my customary Thanksgiving feast with a platter of warm pecan pie with soft ice cream and a glass of wine. I just want to remain true to my heritage.

For Christmas Eve, I always prepare prime rib, rubbed with curry, fresh garlic, ginger, and course black pepper. I serve it with poppy seed potatoes, as I have for the past twenty years. There won’t be any deviations from these two recipes, but others are welcome to bring something new and fancy. We’ll enjoy every bite.

I get a bit emotional around the holidays when my family comes together for meals, and this year we’ll have an empty chair at the table. But there will be commotion at the kid’s table, and the adults will vie for the last turkey leg. It’s traditional.

How to Avoid a Platitude about Gratitude

By

dr sue morter 003With Dr. Sue Morter on the 2009 Gratitude Cruise.
This week’s blog is a copy of my national blog that appears weekly on the Online Magazine at JenningsWire.com.

Feeling guilty because your Thanksgiving experience never resembles the Norman Rockwell painting of a happy family gathered around a lovely table as Grandma in her white apron proudly delivers a perfect turkey? Instead, does your feast often include a drunk uncle, at least one pouting teenager, grandpa blowing his nose on the fine linen, a power outage, gag-inducing gravy, cousins chasing each other with the electric carving knife, a devil-nephew cramming olive pits up his nose, and a quarrel between some adults who should be sitting at the children’s table? Maybe it’s time to put down the drumsticks and the shotguns and just relax. If you get to midnight on Thanksgiving without a single drama, count your blessings, indeed.

We should go over the river and through the woods and then keep on going just to avoid all the glossy images, trite platitudes, and impossible expectations about this holiday. Forget Rockwell’s famous portrait because most grandmothers don’t wear white aprons after fixing a messy meal, and there is a good chance that this year they’ll introduce their new boyfriends instead of picture-perfect platters of browned butterballs. And Martha Stewart is not coming over, so forget the hand-painted placemats and pilgrim-shaped gelatin molds.

After a few decades, we older women ease up on the stressful requirements and have no qualms about using prepared gravy mixes, boxed stuffing, and leftover Halloween napkins. As long as the turkey is done and the wine is open, we’re just fine. My mother’s generation washed Thanksgiving dishes until their hands turned numb while the menfolk watched TV, smoked, and farted. My daughter’s generation finds both men and women working together in the kitchen. I’m thankful that I’ve lived long enough to witness such profound progress.

After experiencing more than 50 Thanksgivings, most of us have at least one that came at a pivotal time in our lives. For me, Thanksgiving provided a poignant perspective a few years ago when I was a middle-aged divorcee and it seemed that everyone in the entire world was part of a happy, loving, and thankful couple. I survived the holiday for two reasons: I never miss a good meal, and I was determined to show gratitude. The second reason was more challenging than the first. I tackled the dilemma by doing something completely spontaneous and crazy: That Thanksgiving I booked a reservation for a cruise the following March to Costa Rica, Panama, and Cozumel.

The cruise was called, ironically, the Gratitude Cruise. I found the information while researching one of my favorite speakers, Dr. Sue Morter. I previously had attended her International Living Seminar as part of a business conference. She is a healer and a teacher, and she focuses on the connections between the mind, the body, and the spirit. I know this sounds way too new-age for my old-age sensibilities, but when you hit bottom you look for the light, any light.

I went on the cruise alone. During the week, the programs included music and workshops about inner peace, meditation, acceptance, resilience, and, most important, gratitude. After wallowing in the negative emotions associated with my divorce, the messages were the antidote to the poison that consumed my thoughts. I returned renewed, refreshed, and ready to live out loud with an attitude of gratitude. Thank you.