This too is Yonkers– by Eric W. Schoen
Baby it’s cold outside. Guess that means the holidays are here. Thanksgiving falls late this year. Do any of the holidays ever fall on time? What is the perfect time for holidays, whether they be American, Christian, Jewish or any religion to fall? Time to start baking those holiday pies. Never too early to make a mincemeat pie.
Mincemeat pie. Just what is a mincemeat pie. The dictionary defines mince pie as a sweet pie of English origin, filled with a mixture of dried fruits and spices called “[1] mincemeat”, that is traditionally served during the Christmas season in much of the English-speaking world. I really never met anyone who said, ‘Don’t forget to pickup a mincemeat pie for dinner.’
Mincemeat pie was popular when I was young but sitting at many Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner parties later in life I can’t think of the last time I saw one served for dinner. Most of us stick to the traditional pies: apple, cherry, coconut custard, pecan and pumpkin pie. I like pumpkin pie when it doesn’t taste too ‘pumpkiny ’ if you can understand what that means.
One Thanksgiving I decided to bake an apple pie and a pecan pie. The aroma of the pies baking in the oven gave the house that smell that the holidays are here. The pecan pie was easy to make. Pecans, corn syrup, brown sugar, everything fattening. The apple pie with the peeling of the apples was a bit more difficult. The apples are healthy and you can adjust the recipe to lower the sugar and fat content.
I don’t understand why no company sells large bags of peeled apples for the holidays to use in preparing apple pie. I think it would be a big seller. But then the quality of both apple pies from traditional bakeries (the few that are left) and grocery store bakery departments is so good why go through the hassle of baking your own. Just take the apple pie you bought, pop it in the oven for a few minutes, and serve it topped off with a scoop of vanilla ice cream! Yummy!
Just like I don’t understand the allure of mincemeat pies, I can’t figure out where those big turkey drumsticks you see people gobbling at the amusement park come from. Has your family ever served a turkey that had such big drumsticks? Do they have a special farm where they grow big turkey drumsticks.
In Westchester we always see turkeys roaming the sides of our parkways. So one year I thought why can’t we have a true Thanksgiving and capture one of those turkeys for our Thanksgiving feast? I then learned that wild turkeys are not for human consumption, their meat being too tough to eat. So much for my brilliant idea!
If you want a live turkey or other poultry item fresh killed before your eyes, Yonkersites go to Yonkers First Live Poultry Market on Main Street. It’s all there for you to see. You can watch as they kill your bird, or simply pay for it and you don’t have to see the process. There aren’t that many places where they slaughter the bird before your eyes. How ‘fresh’ is the turkey the market sells as ‘fresh,’ so I’m ok with a good quality frozen bird. With that stupid little pop up thing that tells you it’s done, it takes the guess out of wondering when to take the bird out of the oven.
My dad was our Thanksgiving, actually most holidays cook. He grew up in the grocery business, his uncles and other relatives owning small grocery stores or as we call them now, bodegas. Before he left the grocery business right after my birth, Dad had grocery stores on Palmer Road and Warburton Avenue in Yonkers. He knew his way around the kitchen.
Dad used a special knife to slice the turkey. Actually it was the same knife he would use to slice lox when on Saturdays when he would work in the Appetizing aka deli departments at Daitch Shopwell in Wykagl in New Rochelle and other area Daitch’s in the area. The knife was an extra sharp knife with a long, thin blade. The kind of knife you can’t fit in your cutlery drawn and have to find a special place in the kitchen to store it. By the way, the knife was dad’s knife, not to be used by anyone else.
After he left his Saturday Daitch duty he went to work on Saturdays only at H & R Bialy in the Quaker Ridge shopping center in New Rochelle, a business still owned by the family who owned it when dad worked there. He was talented with a knife cutting lox and filleting whitefish, and his skills were always in demand.
I don’t remember dad or mom cooking the stuffing in the bird, but I do remember at least one time someone cooking the bird with that little package left inside. Inside that package is the gizzard, the heart, and the liver. Fresh mashed potatoes with a touch of milk and butter to brighten them up, sweet potatoes doctored up from what came in the can and some vegetable that no matter what it was I would not eat. Yes, a ham would sometimes ‘magically’ appear on our table!
Memorable Thanksgivings? 2 days before Thanksgiving one year, I was running in the big yard that was in the back of our apartment at 75 Bruce Avenue and cut my chin open on the rusty metal stairs that would take you from one level in the yard to another. Tetanus shot of course, but the doctor wrapped my head in gauze and tape so I looked like a mummy. Only my mouth, my nose, eyes and ears were not wrapped.
Fortunately the doctor said I could take off the ‘mummy’ healing mask tape Thanksgiving Day so I wouldn’t have to show up for dinner looking like I belonged in a museum. All went well.
Another memorable Thanksgiving? Instead of eating home we went with my uncle to a restaurant in White Plains directly behind the White Plains Mall where Motor Vehicles is. It was a train track styled and themed restaurant. One existed in Yonkers too.
Everything that could go wrong with a dinner actually did go wrong. But the ‘pieces de Resistance’ was the cold, turkey roll turkey covered with cold gravy. ‘Formed’ turkey with little craters’ in it. The sides were lousy too.
From that point on it was Thanksgiving dinner at our house or a relatives house. With dad around everyone knew they would have a great meal. Since dad passed, we have dinner with our cousins the Meyerowitz’s in Sleep Hollow and now Mahopac. Thanksgiving in Sleepy Hollow. My cousins sister is married to a Native America. Dinner in Sleepy Hollow with a real Native American at the table. How much more Americana can you get?
Thanksgiving Day was the traditional Yonkers vs. Gorton football game in the morning until everyone sat down to dinner. Thanksgiving eve featured a float parade down South Broadway. Floats secretly designed in someone’s garage for months, decorated with paper flowers. A night to remember. Particularly when it would rain and the paper flowers that looked so pretty would self destruct. Borrowing a truck to carry or Pull your float. If a Gambardella from the garage’s kid was in your class, you never had to worry about the truck to mount your float on as they used Gambardella’s flatbeds.
Ah, fond memories. But please, no mincemeat pie for me! A joyous Thanksgiving to you and your family!
Reach Eric Schoen at thistooisyonkers@aol.com. Follow him on Twitter @ericyonkers. Listen to Eric Schoen and Dan Murphy on the Westchester Rising Radio Show Thursday’s from 10-11 a.m. On WVOX 1460 AM, go to WVOX.com and click the arrow to listen to the live stream or download the WVOX app from the App Store free of charge.
