Questions and links

[magid]

1. I want to replace my most recent warming tray (now deceased), and the only one I can find locally (so far; I've checked Tag's; Target; Bed, Bath, and Beyond; and Sears) is this one, which (a) doesn't give any idea of what temperature it heats to, (b) doesn't have a way to have it warmer or cooler, and (c) is $100, which just seems high for the kind of thing I want. Apparently I'm being unrealistic, however. Anyway, the question is, where should I try next? In the best of all possible worlds, I'll be able to buy one tomorrow (yeah, I know, the suckiest day of the year to shop) so I'll have it for Shabbat.
   
2. Why is it that corn is not an iconic part of Thanksgiving dinner? It was at the first one, since the natives had given the pilgrims corn (aka maize), but it's not in the cornucopia of carbohydrate necessities we make for the meal. Potatoes are totally in, even though they definitely weren't at the first celebrations, being a Central/South American food that, like chocolate, crossed the Atlantic to Spain, the spread around Europe to England, and thence across the Atlantic again to the English colonies, arriving years after they'd been established.

• art, both geometric (she uses a 3-D photocopier with a computer rendering, which is just cool), and entertaining (well, when it was up)
  
• consumer goods: gorgeous mirrors and other Moroccan things (link courtesy Tcb), and paper to plant after first use (both links courtesy Rosefox), and sweaters that accommodate tefillin (among other Jewish-themed products I never thought needed to exist)
  
• I read a book about James Holman, an amazing traveler in the early 1800s who was blind by his early 20s, which mentioned blind people today using echolocation, clicking when needed rather than using canes, which allows things like riding bikes (also much more independence in general). Very cool.
  
• two things I want to read: some sf stories, and an article about the Orthodox community's shift to the right

Comments

[ruthling.livejournal.com]

possibly because sweet corn on the cob doesn't last this long into the season, while potatoes, sweet potatoes, squash and carrots all do?

::misses corn season::

[magid.livejournal.com]

There's parched corn and popcorn and corn meal and all; no reason it has to be on the cob. But even cornbread stuffing/dressing is merely one of a range of possible stuffings/dressings, and that's the closest I've seen to corn sneaking into the canon. (But not the cannon :-)

[rethought.livejournal.com]

I suppose the inclusion or exclusion of corn depends on what part of the country you're from.
At Thanksgivings (with my predominantly NC raised family) we have cornbread for sure, but sometimes also hominy or corn soup.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Corn soup sounds lovely. Hm... I never make soup for Thanksgiving, with so much other food people are trying to fit into limited stomach space. (Hey, that's the seasonal business to go into: renting extra stomachs :-)

In general, I think of Southern food having more corn in it (cornbread, hominy, etc) than most Northern food, so it makes sense to me that you'd have it. In the general American mythos of Thanksgiving (if there can be generalized to be one American view of anything, of course), the corn doesn't appear in the same way that turkey, stuffing, potatoes (of many sorts), squash, cranberries, and pie do. Which just doesn't make sense. Er, not that I made a point of including corn in my menu this year either; there's just so much starch I can face putting in a meal, however much I adore the starches.

[danger-chick.livejournal.com]

Cornbread sounds good. We're having my family tradition, though, Pillsbury Crescent rolls. My boyfriend was a little horrorified until he specified "get the fancy ones" which in turn meant not generic.

[magid.livejournal.com]

So it's like "Kleenex" v. "kleenex"? (which my family didn't say, opting for the generic "tissues", but seems like the best parallel)

I've never had crescent rolls from a tube. Are they good?

[danger-chick.livejournal.com]

No, that's the name of on the side of the tube for the rolls we're actually eating. They are sort of like croisants for the masses.

[mrn613.livejournal.com]

I doubt much if anything from their cannon is in our cannon. They didn't eat nightshades like potatoes, their maize was not like our corn today, they really didn't bake things in our sense (so no pies or stuffing), if I recall they made a huge mistake by not bringing pigs along, so no oils. If I had to guess what they ate for dinner that day, without googling it, I'd say spit-roasted fowl and deer, wheat or cornmeal batter fried in the drippings, vegetable stew made from whatever root vegetables they had, and beer. On a normal day they probably ate mush for breakfast and lunch, and stew made from whatever was in the house for dinner with mush dumplings on top.

[mrn613.livejournal.com]

Google says the meat they had was fowl and deer.
They were celbrating the maize harvest, so they had maize porridge and pancakes in addition to their wheat version of those things.
In September and October, the vegetables available were parsnips, collards, carrots, parsley, turnips, spinach, cabbages, sage, thyme, marjoram and onions. Dried cultivated beans and dried wild blueberries may have been available as well as native cranberries, pumpkins, grapes and nuts.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Which all sounds excellent to me. Maybe next year I should get some venison for Thanksgiving... (Funny how food fashions change: back then, deer was one of the more prevalent meats, and now it's tony and expensive.)

[magid.livejournal.com]

At some point nightshades did migrate into the diet, but yeah, well after this.

Sounds like the turkey, winter squashes, and cranberries are the likely authentic bits of the meal (though none of them in the same incarnation, at all: wild turkeys wouldn't have a lot of white meat, and would be stringier, winter squash wouldn't likely be sweetened beyond the natural sweetness, and there wouldn't be citrus to pair with the cranberries).

[hauntmeister.livejournal.com]

Wow, http://www.bathsheba.com/ is pretty impressive! Thanks for the link!

[magid.livejournal.com]

:-)

The downside to ever having the money to buy something is that I'd then have to choose just one...

[spwebdesign.livejournal.com]

Why is it that corn is not an iconic part of Thanksgiving dinner?

It isn't? Clearly we have very different experiences of Thanksgiving. Colorful "Indian corn" was always displayed prominently as a decoration at our family dinners, and we had heaps of corn bread plus corn as a side.

Potatoes? The only potatoes anywhere near our table on Thanksgiving were sweet potatoes! Heck, I think the only whitish-colored food item at our dinners was the white meat on the turkey!

[magid.livejournal.com]

My family was very different, indeed. The table wasn't particularly decorated beyond using the nice plates and silverware, and no corn or corn bread. I don't remember whether we had potatoes. If so, certainly not mashed; my mom never made mashed potatoes.

[cyan-blue.livejournal.com]

That's what I was going to say... that the corn is more iconic in terms of the decoration.

[(Anonymous)]

I found a Waring warming tray on the Cooking.com website that heats up to 200 degrees Fahrenheit, has an adjustable thermostat, and is $20 less expensive than the one you found.

See http://www.cooking.com/products/shprodde.asp?SKU=100305 for more information.

I don't know where you could buy one of these in person tomorrow, but you could get one shipped to you for $5.

Maybe potatoes came to be used prominently because of availability, as happened with some Jewish holiday cuisine in Eastern Europe.

Cool links, thanks.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the warming tray link; it looks quite good. Still leaves me with figuring out what to do about warm food tomorrow, though, so I'll keep looking, and if I don't find anything I like, then I have this as backup :-)

[fetteredwolf.livejournal.com]

OK, so I have this warming tray: Maxim Hot Tray with adjustable thermostat and hot spot (http://www.geekshoponline.com/pdetailinfo.php?reference=pdetail&identity=Maxim+Hot+Tray+With+Adjustable+Thermostat+Hot+Spot&&storage=yes&cell=1020454454827).
I got it as a gift from my future inlaws and I love it. But we've had non kosher food on it (in enclosed containers) since I've lent it out to friends having parties. I'm not sure what halacha is like about this- the surface is tempered glass. If you think it's ok, you can borrow it for shabbat.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much!

At yesterday's dinner, someone suggested checking at the Israel Book Store, and indeed, they had. So I got one (obviously, around $100 is now the going rate), and things should be warm tonight :-)

[(Anonymous)]

Ooh, how smart! Use it in good health.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

I hope you had a lovely Shabbat.

[neorock.livejournal.com]

if it's "cordless" what powers it?

the whole 8 min to warm 60 min thing doesn't seem like the kind of thing that works for shabbat.

if you, or someone you know is coming to Israel at any point, you should get one here, 1/4th of the price, and lots of choices. I have a nice one that cost me 100 shekels, is nice and big, and not heavy at all. Though you can't control the temp, it's either on or not on...

[magid.livejournal.com]

Yeah, there were a lot of reasons I didn't care for that one. No clue about the power, either.

This morning I went to Brookline, and the Israel Book Shop had nice ones (I'm too lazy to find a link, but it plugs in, has a range of temps up to 230 F, and is 12 inches x 20 inches of heating surface, which is about what I'm used to.

The hidden cost of getting one ba'Aretz is the schleppage factor to get it home again. On one trip I got a lovely glass bowl at the August craft fair, and hand-carrying it the whole way home (not a direct flight) made me think twice about getting anything awkward to pack again.