Happy Thanksgiving! Gourmet.

The other day I was reading about the word gourmet, because it seemed kind of interesting how many foreign food terms are used in regular English.  And I don't mean French fries, spaghetti, or pizza. Ha!  I meant words like hors d'oeuvres, crudite, and the like.  Yes, Julia Child taught us that there is an art to masterful French cooking.  We tend to have a general concept in America of high food and low food.  If I had to generalize, the high food requires a fork and comes in very small portions, and the low food might focus on flavor via fats and include buffet style serving.

A few hundred years ago, gourmet indicated decadent luxury, and was frowned upon as a violation of the Deadly Sin of gluttony.  By 1984, the term foodie was coined, which referred to a fan of food.

Apparently (from Wikipedia), a gourmet food movement picked up in the 1980s after a long-standing division between elitism and populist tastes, and has accelerated through the 2000s due to rising incomes, globalization, and health/nutrition craze.  With the growth in food awareness, we have seen many new cooking shows, channels, and fads.  In some cases, the high-brow version has become very commonplace (gourmet coffee for example).  With this trend, there have been attempts to spiff up low food, and give gourmet flair to your everyday dish.  You can find thousands of "foodie blogs" these days, also.

So now, the question is this:  Does the gourmet (original gluttony connotation or otherwise) apply to Thanksgiving?  I know very few people who will be eating conservative portions or their normal menu this weekend.

Thanksgiving dinner has some pretty weird foods.  Consider it.  Turkey, stuffing, gravy, cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, sweet potatoes, squash.  Pumpkin Pie.  This is about what our menu looked like, too, though add a couple of varieties of jello salad, heavenly sweet potatoes, and butternut squash to go with it!  And Grammy Mitchell always provides about 6 varieties of pie!

from Wikipedia.

Some of these foods are only eaten once per year, but are delicious.  Not that they are decadent, but because they are traditional, perhaps.  And we don't go for dainty portions.  I had two plates worth.

The long table of loved ones.

Papa working on the bird.

Jen did the centerpieces and place-cards this year.  Didn't she do great?

Yes, that is an edible pilgrim hat, a juicy apple votive, and a cranberry/floral/mason floaty thing.

Let the games begin!