I remember the look on my grandfather's face when I tried to politely explain that I couldn't eat the giblet gravy or the dressing (known in other parts of the country as "stuffing") that I had always relished. The reason, I informed him, was that I was a vegetarian; those old favorites contained turkey broth.
He replied with a blank stare. It was a completely isolating experience. In a family where preparing and sharing food is our strongest form of emotional currency, my rejection of my family's food was a rejection of their affection and a rejection of my culture.
Before I had become a vegetarian, I had been "called" to carry on my grandmother's cornbread dressing and giblet-gravy tradition. I had stood at her elbow to learn the craft of one of my family's most prized foods. Now my personal diet choices threatened the survival of a family heirloom.
Tradition and Its Discontents
That was years ago. But as I listened to an interview with Jessica Prentice, author of Full Moon Feast: Food and the Hunger for Connection, these memories resurfaced. In the interview, radio host Caroline Casey and Prentice suggest adopting flexible working food principles along these lines: "Whatever increases our sense of kinship is sacrament and nutritious food. Whatever increases our sense of alienation is poison."
Somewhere in the last five years, progressive food culture has begun to evolve beyond the minefield of infinite individual food rules to valuing conviviality, inclusion, and a more tolerant mindset. This progress can be attributed to a wide variety of sources. Sally Fallon's Nourishing Traditions taught us to relax fat-phobic diet rules and to value traditional food knowledge. The wide popularity of Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma brought to light the dilemmas of the industrial diet -- including vegetarian ones.
When we begin to reconnect to land and place and attempt to eat a diet of locally grown whole foods, we have to reconsider our reliance on industrially produced soy burgers with lengthy ingredient lists full of words we can't pronounce. Maybe we see our own family food traditions unraveling, and we contemplate the hand that our purity-seeking food choices have played in that process. We learn that we have to choose to be part of a community, and that doing so requires that conviviality take precedence over our rigid personal diet rules.
I do not mean to say that we should just quietly accept the factory-farmed turkey that is handed to us as inevitable. I hope only to encourage the preservation of hospitableness. This is new territory for most of us, and I am interested in hearing your stories. How do you reconcile your personal food choices and your family traditions? What are creative means for doing this?
The Bitter with the Sweet
Regardless of the menu, many have conflicted feelings about celebrating Thanksgiving at all, and rightly so. In the interview, Prentice remarks that Thanksgiving represents the very best and the very worst of our country. On one hand Thanksgiving is a celebration of the colonial wiping out of indigenous people, but it is also an exceptional day of national gratitude and a relatively noncommercial, inclusive celebration of nature.
Shunning Thanksgiving will not undo the harm that Europeans wrought on Native Americans. We can, however, look to Thanksgiving celebrations as an opportunity to show ceremonial reverence to the wisdom of indigenous and traditional cultures and to reclaim the connections -- to our community, our cultures, and our food sources -- that we as a nation have largely lost. This brings to mind the words of Native American activist Winona LaDuke. In a speech at Terre Madre in Turin, Italy, this year, she said Native Americans regard all creatures and all plants as their relatives; and if we care for these living things as such, they will care for us in return.
We can do this by valuing the story of our foods. Where did they come from? Who nurtured them year after year, saved their seeds, and passed them to the next generation? Who grows them for us now? How did these foods become cherished? What is the source of our traditions?
Sweet Potato Everlasting Rolls
I take great pride in the fact that I have reintroduced my family to an old Southern recipe for potato yeast rolls that has broken their addiction to the hydrogenated-oil-laden, pre-made variety. And I did it by making an argument based on practicality, not judgment. As working women, my mother and grandmother never wanted to fool with yeasted bread, and certainly not in addition to an already labor-intensive holiday meal.
Easy-to-make rolls: one more thing to be thankful for.
However, this recipe gets its name from the fact that it lasts and lasts. You can make the rolls as early as a week ahead and keep the dough in the refrigerator until needed. That convenience won my family over. The traditional recipe is made with a white-potato starter, but I employ the sweet potato. It is significant to my hometown of Vardaman, Mississippi, which holds a Sweet Potato Festival every year complete with a queen and cooking contests. The sweet potato also offers its beautiful autumnal color and natural sweetness to the dough. Feel free to substitute white potato, or even pumpkin, in its place. I love to make a double or even triple batch of these rolls, bake them off in disposable pie tins, and take them around to friends and extended family on Thanksgiving morning. Nothing is more appreciated than homemade yeast rolls.
3 tablespoons lard (or safflower or sunflower oil)
3 tablespoons butter
1 cup buttermilk or milk
1/2 cup honey or 1/4 cup sugar
1 cup mashed baked sweet potato
1 1/2 cups Sweet Potato Starter, recipe follows
2 eggs, beaten
6 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
Melted butter
Bring the lard, butter, buttermilk, and honey (or sugar) to a low boil while stirring. Remove from heat and stir in the mashed sweet potato. When cooled to lukewarm, stir in the sweet potato starter. Beat in the eggs. Beat in the flour, one cup at a time. Beat in the salt, soda, and baking powder, then turn out onto a floured surface and knead for 10 minutes, adding as little flour as possible to the dough.
Transfer the dough to a lightly oiled bowl or container at least twice its size and cover tightly. Let the dough rise in the refrigerator at least 6 hours and up to one week tightly covered.
To bake rolls, butter an 8- or 9-inch pie pan. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
With buttered hands, pinch off walnut-sized pieces of dough and roll into 2-inch diameter balls. Place 7-8 in each pie pan. Cover with a damp towel and sit aside to rise until double in bulk, about one hour. Brush the tops of the rolls with melted butter and bake for 10 minutes until golden brown. Serve warm with homemade honey butter. (Whip honey into soft, lightly salted butter.)
Sweet Potato Starter
4 cups water
1/4 cup all purpose flour
2 tablespoons honey
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 package dry yeast or 2 1/4 teaspoons of instant yeast
Cook the sweet potatoes in the water in a saucepan until tender. Drain the potatoes and reserve the water. Press the sweet potatoes through a fine strainer or food mill. Add the reserved water, whisk to combine, and let cool to lukewarm. Mix in the remaining ingredients and sit aside at room temperature for 6-8 hours or until frothy. It is now ready to use. Refrigerated it will keep about 2 weeks.
Sweet Potato-Cardamom Monkey Bread
Another reason to make a big batch of the sweet potato yeast roll dough is that the dough can be manipulated to endless variation, and it solves the question of what you can serve for breakfast on Thanksgiving morning. Use as a base for cinnamon rolls or fold in dried cherries or cranberries and pecans to the dough. This recipe is my variation on a favorite Southern breakfast or tea bread with a funny name. The bread is also called "pull-apart bread" because it is never sliced, but simply pulled apart in segments. The flavor of this bread is similar to a cinnamon roll. You can use cinnamon as the spice called for here; add nuts, raisins, or whatever your favorite ingredients are. A Bundt pan serves 12 and uses entire recipe of dough; 1 pound loaf serves 6 and uses half recipe.
Butter pan. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Melt 4 tablespoons butter in a small bowl. Combine 1/2 cup of turbinado sugar with 1/2 teaspoon of ground cardamom in another bowl. Pinch off walnut-sized pieces of the dough, dip them in butter, roll them in sugar (or sprinkle them with sugar if you prefer them less sweet), and layer them in pan. Cover the dough with a damp towel and let rise for two hours.
Bake until the loaf is firm and golden brown, about 45 minutes. Let cool slightly and remove from pan. Serve hot or at room temperature. Remember to tear the bread instead of slicing it.
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Comments View as Flat
LinusCello Posted 3:31 am
20 Nov 2008
Disposable pie tins?
Hopefully the author has salvaged/re-used these disposable pie tins rather than buying new ones...
Sweet Potato Everlasting Rolls
Easy-to-make rolls: one more thing to be thankful for. ...I love to make a double or even triple batch of these rolls, bake them off in "disposable pie tins," and take them around to friends and extended family on Thanksgiving morning.
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farmersdaughter Posted 12:58 am
21 Nov 2008
response: tins
Linuscello: You bring up a good point. I should clarify. As a commercial baker I buy heavy duty, so-called "disposable" pie tins because I sell pies to the public. I ask my customers to return them to me, and I reuse them again and again. To avoid this issue altogether, it would be nice to bake a large batch of rolls on a sheet pan and wrap them in a tea towel to take to your friends and family.
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redambrosia99 Posted 1:53 am
21 Nov 2008
pie pans
For myself, I use either my dad's pie pans (which are older than me) or my glass and ceramic pie pans. I've found that ceramic pie pans make a better crust on pie >.>b
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Stephanie Ogburn Posted 5:19 am
21 Nov 2008
Family awkwardness
April,
I instantly connected with your lead description of rejecting the food (meat) of your family and the subsequent isolation that caused. I became vegetarian at a young age and was vegan for a while in college, which served to further my distancing from a family that I already felt estranged from, as I developed a worldview and political affiliations that were very distinct from theirs.
My family and I are still very different. But I, still vegetarian, have found ways to bridge the gap by cooking for them good food that they can enjoy. Sometimes they like the food enough to learn to cook it themselves, on other occasions it is simply a food I create for them when I visit -- but some of these concoctions they have liked enough to ask me to make them when I'm around. I've also been able to connect with the older members of my family through a shared love of gardening and growing things, both edible and decorative. This exercise in finding things we share -- an appreciation for foods that taste good and flowers that are beautiful, and a love for crafting homemade foods like preserves and pickles -- has brought me closer to my grandmother, who otherwise can't understand very much about the person I am. We might not agree on politics or presidents, but we can share recipes for peach cobbler.
It is my hope that, over the long term, I can use the beliefs and values that my family does share with me to help explain where I'm coming from in terms of the beliefs and values where we are vastly different. It will be a struggle. But food and art seem to me to be two universal spheres where human beings can connect and maybe span gaps that otherwise would be unbridgeable.
Thanks for the post -- now I have to try the recipe!
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amatthews138 Posted 2:36 am
22 Nov 2008
Reconnecting
I was so happy to read this article because I have a need for the holidays to be a time of reconnection with family and loved ones, and like most cultures, we do this through food. As vegetarians, April, and Stephanie in the last post, mentioned that it is possible to be vegetarian and still share food with our families, so that the focus is on great-tasting comfort food, with less focus on the lack of meat. I couldn't agree more and I appreciate their sharing this reminder that we can all reconnect with one another, as well as with our own values, during the holidays.
I wanted to contribute an idea to this discussion. Many vegetarians overlook the use of dairy and eggs because, for one, we don't want to exclude ourselves from society too much, and two, we know that we are not killing the animal. I will focus, for the sake of space here, on dairy. Unfortunately, supporting the dairy industry does support the meat industry.
Dairy cows would live more than 25 years naturally, but on a dairy farm, where they are forced to produce one calf per year, they are exhausted after 3 or 4 years, and are then sent to slaughter for ground beef, leather, or animal feed.
Dairy cows are herbivores forced to be carnivores and receive hormone injections, the result for both being larger milk yields. Naturally, the mother would produce 25 pounds of milk per day at the climax of calf feeding, but are forced to produce 90 to 110 pounds of milk on a dairy farm.
As soon as the calf is born, it is forcibly stolen from the mother. Mothers and babies of all mammals experience emotional distress from this separation. The mother will be inseminated on the rape rack again, the babies have a few "options".
A female calf will experience the same fate as her mother. A male calf could be immediately loaded onto a truck for the veal industry, or raised for beef. If the demand is low in either of these industries, however, the male calf would be killed in order to extract the rennet in his stomach for making cheese.
As most of the readers here are educated and informed readers, I am sure that many choose organic milk or hormone-free milk, and I am thankful that more healthful options are available. However, this of course does not stop the cycle of abuse and distress from separation that occurs for dairy cows and their babies.
I have added this information to the discussion here because I would like to encourage the use of nondairy items in our recipes, when possible. I'm not making a radical statement that everyone should be vegan and should be ashamed if you aren't. But in the spirit of love for not just our own families, but all beings, give it a try, maybe once in a while.
My partner and I have hosted several family holiday parties which were vegan (although we didn't call it that), and even our meat-eating conservative relatives loved our food and have insisted on eating more of it and getting recipes. I'm sure April's sweet potato rolls are delicious, I have no doubt she is a wonderful cook. Here is a link to a recipe for sweet potato biscuits which are nondairy, which I made throughout the holiday season last year, and were a great hit: http://www.recipezaar.com/Sweet-Potato-Biscuits-Vegan-104 ....
For peace and love during the holiday season,
Amy
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caniscandida Posted 7:13 pm
22 Nov 2008
kinship, alienation
"Sacrament" and "poison" are strong words -- it is probably not very often that an actual divinization, or murder, takes place at a Thanksgiving dinnertable. But Prentice and Casey are certainly right to observe that on such occasions, much can happen, for good or for ill, of great importance to how we get on with people who might be of uncertain closeness to us.
The verb "to reconnect" sounds rather cheap, prosaic and quick in this context. It is what you do when the coffee pot's plug gets bumped and falls out of its socket. E.M. Forster, one of my favorite writers, was indulging in a gnomic, vatic concision that we should not too readily try to imitate, when he made for his great novel "Howard's End" the epigraph and moral, "Only connect!" The resumption of old conversations with distant loved ones, whom a happy occasion has gathered together with us, is a truly beautiful and precious thing, and deserves a better word than "reconnect."
And as for "traditions," they deserve to be sent to hell, if they are clung to merely through fear, or laziness, or a desire to control. Certainly that Thanksgiving dinnertable will not be cultivating true "kinship," if a vegetarian/vegan is made to feel trapped, with no friend or ally, in a bitter dilemma: either eat the flesh of an unjustly slaughtered fellow sentient creature, or insult the company.
Thanks, April, for being a peacemaker ("Blessed are the peacemakers ... "), and for those mightily happy-sounding recipes.
And thanks, Amy Matthews, for reminding us that there are few sentient creatures who suffer as much injustice as dairy cows.
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farmersdaughter Posted 2:32 am
23 Nov 2008
Reverent, Occasional Meat Eater
Just to be clear, I am no longer vegetarian. I still have a vegetable-centered diet, but I do occasionally eat meat. I think it is very important that when we are highlighting the abuses done to dairy cows and all animals in our industrial food system, that we point out that their are alternatives other than becoming a vegan. There is a significant increase in availability of farmstead cheeses, butter, and yogurt across the country from cows who are respected, well-treated, and graze on pasture. The same is true of pigs and chickens and turkeys. I had a conversation with Don Bixby of The American Livestock Breeds Conservancy a few years ago. He said that in order to save heritage breeds of livestock, they need a job. If that job is feeding us, then we both benefit. I am a firm supporter of the "Eat it to Save it" Movement.
I have bridged the gap in my family by offering to bring the turkey for our Thanksgiving celebration, which is a heritage breed that is allowed to eat bugs and grass and run around in plenty of space. I also located a country ham from a pastured heritage breed pig for our Christmas celebration, from an artisan ham curer. My family thinks these foods taste "the way food used to," and this leads to discussion on the failings of industrial agriculture.
In my family, there is great reverence for the pig. As sustenance farmers in harsh Appalachian winters, cured pork, kraut, dried beans, and dried corn made up the whole of the diet of my ancestors. Pork was not only used for meat, but also as the primary source of fat, necessary for survival.
My husband and I both began to eat animal products again about 5 years ago when we became concerned about our dependence on modern soy products and wanted to shift our diet dependence to locally grown and small-scale food production.
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vstross Posted 10:45 pm
23 Nov 2008
Re: Reverent, Occasional Meat Eater
@farmersdaughter said:
"There is a significant increase in availability of farmstead cheeses, butter, and yogurt across the country from cows who are respected, well-treated, and graze on pasture. The same is true of pigs and chickens and turkeys."
While becoming vegan/vegetarian has a LOT to do with the treatment of the animals, this choice is equally related to resource issues. Spreading the idea of farmstead products only INCREASES the amount of resources required to sustain a growing population of humans demanding these products. The reason factory-farming grew so fast is because it requires less resources. This issue is much bigger than the middle-class farmstead Thanksgiving - there are 6 billion people eating animals - what happens if they demand their animal products from suppliers who require more resources to produce them?
If you WERE vegetarian and justified your switch by choosing a MORE resource-intensive option, then you were never really a vegetarian.. just a rebellious trendy middle class American.
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pblank Posted 3:05 am
24 Nov 2008
conviviality
Vstross,
I'll avoid your comments that were meant to be hurtful because I sincerely want to dialogue with you- what is your thanksgiving like? Are there people there from different generations/cultures? How do you relate to them? Good things? Bad things? Memories?
I'm not trying to be snarky, but I'm trying to figure out how progressives see and experience conviviality at the table in these times.
P
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rprice Posted 4:22 pm
25 Nov 2008
Food and Kinship
April, your Grist article was great, as always. I was moved and made homesick for southern Mississippi by the food and kinship quote... "Whatever increases our sense of kinship is sacrament and nutritious food. Whatever increases our sense of alienation is poison."
Up here, in Bellingham, Washington, everyone seems to define themselves based on what they WON'T eat (e.g. "I don't DO wheat/dairy/gluten/sugar/etc."), and it is truly alienating. Potlucks become a competition over who can bring the most politically correct dish, instead of a sharing of each person's favorite recipe...
In a town where most everyone is a transplant rather than a native, it's a shame that we know more about our neighbors through what they have come to reject or eliminate from their lives, than from the pieces of their own culture they could have brought into our little community.
I've written off those self-righteous potlucks completely and made an appreciation for bacon one of my tests for true friendship. You can't be too picky around here!!!
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ginger root Posted 11:40 pm
26 Nov 2008
Question?!?!
Has anyone had trouble with the dough rising in the refrigerator? I followed the directions with the starter, and then made the dough and put it immediately in the fridge to rise overnight, but it hasn't risen at all. Perhaps my fridge is too cold.
This morning I kneaded in some extra yeast, and have put the dough in a warmish place to rise. Hopefully this will help.
Was the dough supposed to rise very much in the fridge? Like double in size? Has anyone else had a problem? Please respond!
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farmersdaughter Posted 3:29 am
27 Nov 2008
rising problem
So long as your yeast was good and you didn't kill it by exposing it to too hot a temperature (not above 100 degrees or so), your dough should have risen some in the refrigerator -- though probably not double in 8 hours. At cold temperatures, yeast dough rises slowly, but it does rise. When you bring your dough out to room temperature it will warm up and rise more rapidly. Kneading in extra yeast won't hurt your dough so you should still be fine. If you cut the sugar in the dough, it will also rise more slowly. Hope this helps.
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farmersdaughter Posted 3:37 am
27 Nov 2008
rising problem, part 2
Another point I should mention is that you are not only relying on the yeast in this recipe. You also have baking powder and soda as leaveners. That said the dough should still rise, just not as much or as fast as say, baguette or pizza dough.
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ginger root Posted 9:07 am
27 Nov 2008
rising problem resolved
okay, they turned out, and just in time for thanksgiving dinner! thanks for the awesome recipe, i only used half the dough, and might make cinnamon rolls with the leftover tomorrow, yum....
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farmersdaughter Posted 3:09 am
28 Nov 2008
Industrial vs. Sustainable Agriculture
vtross,
Although I would like to focus more on cultivating food fellowship than debating diets or agricultural systems, I would like to counter your assertion that small scale sustainable agriculture is more resource-intensive. While it is true that CAFOs produce animal protein faster than pasture, it is not without tremendous costs and input resources.
"It's a myth that the world can't produce enough food from sustainable, local food systems for its population -- just like it's a myth that hunger and starvation are based on world food shortages, when the truth is hunger is based on poverty and the inequities and economies of food distribution." -- Jules Pretty, professor and director for the Centre for Environment and Society at the University of Essex in England
Read the whole article from Acres USA:
http://www.acresusa.com/toolbox/reprints/Indust%20vs%20su ...
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