First, we eat!

If you're getting ready for the holiday (and hosting) you should have thought about your turkey choice this year - frozen or fresh.  I believe this is a more heated debate that Shiite or Sunni.  Look, frozen is cheaper and if you buy it by today you will have enough time to defrost it safely in your refrigerator by Thursday.

If you want to buy a fresh one (or forget to buy a frozen one today,) you have until Wednesday night to go shopping. You can buy a frozen one later this week but defrosting it properly is between you and your god.  While you are having that religious debate with yourself, here are a couple of fun Thanksgiving related sitcoms. 

Cheers - Thanksgiving Orphans



Norm's wife, Vera Peterson, is played by George Wendt's actual wife, Bernadette Birkette.


The Bob Newhart Show - An American Family



The title is from the 1973 PBS documentary series about the Loud family where cameras were taken into their home to document their everyday life in an early example of Reality TV.


You don't need to stress out about the first part of your Thanksgiving feast.  Please feel free to run to your local deli and get the following items:

precut Carrots/ Celery Sticks
Pre-cubed assorted Cheese
Jarred Olives

If you need to work off a past sin or earn your way into heaven, here's a somewhat simple recipe for a Shrimp Dip.  Trust me, if you make it, you will impress you friends and family.

Since Thanksgiving is mostly about ritual and tradition, here is the annual posting of my family's traditional holiday dip. This is literally a blast from the 60s but then again, so am I.

Rather than risk the scornful mocking reproaches from my mother, she is making her shrimp dip this year. But for those of you who are not partaking in our holiday feast this year, I give you my moms recipe for Shrimp Dip (mom if you're reading this, I'm sure I got something wrong). For the rest of you, it's perfect and perhaps you have a slight clue as to the high alcohol content of my recipes.


Ingredients
1 - 10 oz. can condensed tomato soup (you know that kind - Andy Warhol painted it and until they pay me, I'm not mentioning the brand name.)
1 - 8 oz. package cream cheese
1 - 8 oz. jar of mayonnaise
1 package of Knox Gelatin (I mentioned the brand name, sue me, I don't know any other gelatin company.)
1 cup diced onions
1 cup diced celery
3 - 5 ounces cans of medium shrimp*
1/4 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce



Tools

* Sharp utility knife
* Dinner size folk (not the salad folk)
* Cutting board
* Small saucepan
* Medium sized mixing bowl
* Can opener
* Medium sized sieve
* 1.5 quart Tupperware bowl (with bumpable lid)**
* 1 large wooden spoon
* Several shots of the best vodka you have (in your freezer)
* 1 Beach Boys CD (preferably Pet Sounds)



Directions

Turn on the CD. It had better be Pet Sounds.



Don't argue with me - If Sgt Pepper didn't exist, this would have been the greatest album ever made. Brian Wilson went crazy because of it. A character in Doonesbury died while listening to it - I'll come to your house and hurt you.

Cut your onion and celery into small dice like pieces. I usually don't care about these sort of things but since you aren't going to cook them, cut them fairly evenly and small (those of you suffering from OCD - 6/16 squares.) Take you're first shot of vodka. Put the onions and celery aside. Contemplate the obsessive nature of musical geniuses (think about how many different drugs Brian must have been doing at the time to name an album Pet Sounds.)

Add the cream cheese, mayo, onions and celery into the bowl and mix thoroughly. (Take a shot or not - your choice.) Heat the soup in small saucepan over a medium flame until just simmering and take off flame. Add the Worcestershire and the gelatin package into the heated soup and stir vigorously (to avoid clumping.) This is called 'blooming the gelatin'. Stir for about five minutes. Let 100 flowers bloom (my mother proof read this and specifically wanted me to mention that she is not encouraging the advancement of Communism by the making of her shrimp dip. Duly noted mom.)

Add the tomato soup into the cream cheese mixture and combine thoroughly. Congratulate yourself that you've come this far with the recipe and have another shot. Open the cans of shrimp and drain and briefly rinse shrimp. Add to the cheese mixture and fold shrimp in until just combined, trying not to mash the shrimps up (if you do - so what, your mother isn't going to yell at you.) You should be up to the really sad part of the CD - try not to cry into the bowl. If you can't stop crying - cut your alcohol intake immediately.

Transfer to Tupperware bowl. Smooth the top and seal. Remember to 'burp' the bowl. Giggle to yourself - it's ok, you burped the bowl. Refrigerate several hours (overnight is preferable.)

To serve, remove from refrigerator and warm outside of bowl to loosen dip from side and turn out onto a serving plate. Serve with crackers (My mother prefers Ritz crackers - I like Carr's; it's your choice, she's not your mother.)



* 3 cans of the medium size shrimp equal about a pound of cooked shrimp. If you can't bring yourself to use canned shrimp - by all means use cooked shrimp. You'll need to chop the shrimp into small pieces (maybe even squirt them with a slice of lemon - again, your mother isn't looking over your shoulder.)

** You can use whatever resealable container you'd like, Tupperware didn't pay me a dime.