How to make proper apple pie

and other Thanksgiving tips

Happy day before Thanksgiving; class is in session.

If you’re looking for inspiration or want to try “another family’s way” with traditional dishes, I’ll share three with you. The apple pie is my mother’s way, and the other two are mine.

With recipes, I don’t list out weights and measures and detailed steps. I assume you are a competent cook and do not need step by step hand-holding. If you do, you’ll have to sign up and pay for an hour of remedial instruction because baby, ain’t nobody got time for dat!

My mother’s apple pie

This way with pie is the best, and everyone I’ve served it to said they enjoy it more than the bland and pale apple pie found almost everywhere.

—Use Granny Smith apples. You want that tart against the sugar.
—Use only dark brown sugar, no white sugar at all
—Add two to three times as much spice as any recipe calls for. You want a rich, almost “gingerbread/spice-cake” flavor.
—Cut a whole stick of butter into slices and dot the top of the apple mixture with it under the top crust
—Be sure to make your pastry with only butter, or half-butter, half-lard, and no other fat. No, you may not use Crisco. Throw that poison out immediately.

Sausage stuffing

Everyone knows the stuffing is the best part of the meal. I like dried bread cubes for best texture. The seasoning is Bell’s in the little yellow box. If you can’t find that, add a ton of sage and thyme, along with a bit of oregano, marjoram, etc. Obviously salt and pepper.

Cook off one pound of pork sausage, country style, or another of your choice. Add bay leaves. Cook down your onion and celery with the sausage until the vegetables are soft and translucent. Use chicken broth and plenty of butter to wet the ingredients and mix together before stuffing the bird.

Make a shit ton of extra to bake next to the turkey because no one gives a fuck about anything but the stuffing.

Creamed spinach with dill and feta

You can scale this up. Take a one pound bag of frozen, chopped spinach and cook in a pan just long enough to draw out the water, and drain. Put the spinach back in the pan and heat over low-medium with butter and heavy cream. Add chopped fresh dill (dried if you only have that), and more than you think you need. Add chopped scallions.

Cook over low-medium, letting the cream simmer and reduce somewhat. Check seasoning (salt and pepper). If it’s too thin for your taste, whisk some corn starch or flour into some cream, and whisk that into the cooking spinach.

Crumble feta into at the end. Yeah, this is just spanakopita without the pastry shell.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone but Christina!

BONUS TIP: For an authentic experience, perform one of my mother’s patented unnecessary breakdowns. Timing is everything. You must lose your shit at exactly the right moment. That moment is when people take their first bite and compliment you on the supper.

Do this:

Crumple your face and scream, “I work so hard and it’s never enough! I’M NOT A PERFECT FUCKING MOM OK!” Then angry cry while other people are trying to figure out if it’s OK to keep eating.