Friday food

This edition of Friday Food brought to you courtesy of the fine folks at Thyme for Cooking.

Another Thanksgiving has come and gone. Our table was loaded with all the greatest hits of the holiday, and I'm proud to say that our food was all home-cooked and delicious: our turkey was brined the day before, then slow-roasted with sage, onion, and celery stuffing; there were sweet potatoes, boiled, then sliced and fried with butter and brown sugar; mountains of delectable mashed potatoes, mashed with butter, cream, and salt. Three--count 'em, three--homemade pies from scratch: cherry, pecan, and pumpkin (well, OK, we used canned pumpkin for the latter, but the crust was homemade).

But those wise folks at Thyme for Cooking are sage (tee hee) enough to know that the most devoted cook probably has some kind of skeleton in his/her holiday closet. They want to know what item you put on the table that you are, perhaps, mostly inclined to leave off the official list of what was served. So they issued a challenge: come clean with your dirty laundry.

Here's mine:

The relish tray. Is this a Midwestern thing? I certainly grew up with it. No holiday gathering was complete without one. And truthfully, I'm very fond of the black olives that come in the tin cans, and green olives with pimento? C'mon, you know you like them. They're particularly good on pepperoni pizza.

But that third item--ah, that's the embarrassment. That is celery. Filled using spray cheese in a can. You know the stuff--the "pasteurized cheese product." It's not cheese, it's a cheese product. It's shelf stable--once you open the can, you can just keep it in the cupboard. No need to refrigerate. It's very, very orange.

This is my brother's favorite relish. He doesn't ask for much. It must be provided. So every year, in November, I buy a can of this spray cheese product and put out a relish tray. Since I don't use up the whole can at Thanksgiving, I can keep it (in the cupboard) until Christmas, when I use it again.

The really sad thing is that I, um, kind of like it too. As do the kids.

There. You know my deep dark holiday table secret.

What's yours?

Comments

[Cindy]

A Midwest thing? You mean there are people in this country who don't have a relish tray at Thanksgiving?
Must have little sweet pickles. And DH would almost go without turkey before he gave up the canned black olive :)

[Carrie K]

Cheez Whiz? The horror! Celery is supposed to be filled w/peanut butter.

[Heidi]

Yes! Relish tray is a holiday feast MUST. This year it contained pickles, canned black olives, and my sister's yummy homemade dilly beans (pickled string beans). My deep dark holiday secret is canned cranberry. You know, the jelly stuff that slides out of the can with a satisfying "sluuurrrp-plop" and then you slice it into rounds. Alas, none this year. My mom's yummy homemade cranberry orange relish instead. But ya know, I still did kinda miss it. ;-)

[Sarah R]

We always had trays like that...green and ripe olives, celery (though ours, I think, was stuffed with cream cheese) and little tiny pickles. In our family, that tray of goodies is not called relish but "Obalees and Obalahs," because that's what my brother called them when he was little.

And those canned black olives? May not be tasty but how else are you going to decorate the tips of your fingers?

[mary]

OMG Ladies! Cheez Whiz in a can? I will tell you how I use this, I use it to teach my dogs scent articles. I put a bit of cheese from a can on an article and then put it in a pile of unscented articles and send the dog for it. I tell ya, they find it every time :) And a few years later when I have a new dog I am teaching, I use cheese from the same can. It never ages.

Ah, but truthfully, I can eat the stuff myself too. And like Guinifer's family, I'll never admit it in public but I love fried spam.

[Connie]

We always had to have a relish tray for the holidays...I really only like my grandmother's dill pickles, not the sweets, and I think my kids would love spray cheese - they love spray whipped cream :) My deep dark secret is that I purchased frozen pies and baked them...2 of the pies we had were chocolate!

[Katie]

The relish tray was a staple on our (midwestern) holiday table as well. It was the only time we had olives and they were such a treat. So it was olives, dill pickles, and celery sticks - with Cheese Whiz - from the jar. The precursor to spray cheese!

[Kitt]

Mmmmmmmm, spray cheese.

We had spray whipped cream on our pie.

It's also good in coffee.

[Guinifer]

Umm, we add pickles, dill & sweet, to the tray. The celery gets its own plate and we used the Kraft Roka Blue Cheese (comes in a little jelly jar).

[kmkat]

Not for Thanksgiving, thankfully, but fried Spam is quite the breakfast treat 'round my house. Or campsite.

The relish tray was a requirement at holiday dinners when I was growing up, too, and it is a tradition I continue. Baby gherkins and watermelon pickles are my favorite part of it, although green olives come close. Ripe olives from a can seem to me to be a spongy dark void in the universe, devoid of flavor, so I do not partake of those; they are for the spousal unit.

[bezzie]

I must confess I may or may not be known for spraying the cheese product spray directly into my mouth. I love real cheese, and yet I love the crappy working class cheese too!

[Renee]

When I was growing up, my grandma always had celery with spray can cheese and celery with peanut butter for me. I have to admit that I still want some every once in a while.

As for our Thanksgiving, we just have the basics, but we didn't make the pies. I thought about making them, but decided it really was much easier to buy them. Nothing too weird or embarrassing.

[Chris]

Um, I'm not coming up with anything on par with the spray cheese! My SIL's family makes something that involved taking a triscuit, putting a slice of cheese on it, wrapping it in bacon, and baking the whole shebang. The triscuit made it verboten for me, but it looked deadly (and I heard it was quite tasty).

[Carole]

We stuff the celery with cream cheese and green olives. Mmm.