ACME is proud to repost the following holiday recipes over the next few days, so you can get through Thanksgiving with your liver intact:
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
the Florida recount. 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.
The Gilmore Girls - A Deep-Fried Korean Thanksgiving:
Look for it: Before launching into
Hymn 17 as
Mrs. Kim requests,
Dave plays the main riff from
The Man who Sold the World by
David Bowie.
Northern Exposure - Thanksgiving:
Look for it: When
Ed hits
Fleischman with the tomato the stain on
Fleischman's shirt changes between shots.
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, repeat my posting about my family's traditional holiday dip. This is literally a blast from the
60s but then again, so am I.
I originally thought that these scribblings were preserving family recipes for my daughters, but my mother still continues to look for errors in the recipes. So with much trepidation, I give you her recipe for
Shrimp Dip (I no loner apology if 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.)
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.
Demand Euphoria!
