Thanksgiving Question: What’s Your Glark?

Since I was twelve, my mom has made seven-layer salad for Thanksgiving – I like to think of it as 10% iceberg lettuce, 5% bacon, and 85% mayo/sour cream. (There are supposedly other layers, but I cannot tell you what they are or if they actually make the cut in my mom’s version.) It is everything I dislike in a salad. But one year my mom ran out of time for Thanksgiving prep due to a promotion at work and had to rely on a bit of help from the store in preparing dinner. As soon as we sat down, I ignored the store-cooked turkey and instant mashed potatoes and asked loudly, “But where’s the salad?” Oh, tradition.

I am from Ohio; anyone else have to have homemade noodles (not pasta…this is like a thick noodle and chicken broth) which you add over mash potatoes? We cant have a family holiday without this dish.
Also, my sister in law would bring the same cool whip dessert (the one with pudding and crust and then layer with cool whip on top) EVERY family gathering and she would take home the leftovers which was the whole pie minus one piece that someone would eat. I asked one year for her to bring a different dessert for a change and she brought the fucking same dessert with vanilla pudding vs. the chocolate! LOL!
I am curious that someone mentioned calories above and I cant recall a calorie talk among my aunts and mom during our holiday gatherings in the 70 and 80s. They were in shape gals and brought very high caloric dishes but nothing was ever shunned or discussed because it was “bad for you” or caloric. It is always a hot topic at the modern dinner tables.

@cupofjo could you find out from google , how many people googled glark since the post? :)

At my house our most ridiculous conversations happen while we are all doing dishes. Once we tried to come up with the grossest food we could thing of, and bananaise (banana mayonaise) was the winner. Now you’re telling me bananaise is real????????

My inlaws serve something called “pink salad” which is an unholy combination of cool whip, condensed milk, and cherry pie filling. Needless to say, it is DELICIOUS, and now has a regular place on my table as well!

On a little plate placed at every setting, there was always this: A piece of lettuce topped with half a canned pear, dollop mayo + Kraft shredded cheddar. No one ever eats it but it’s always there. WHAT IS THIS??

As you all probably know we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving here in the UK but I wish we did because it’s a fabulous idea! Sending all good wishes to the lovely CoJ community therefore for Thanksgiving.

That’s so funny about the Jell-O salad. I’m 60 and through most of my years there was always some type of jello salad at get togethers. My favorite was strawberry Jell-O salad with a pretzel crust.

Watergate! Why is it named that? Pistachio pudding, cool whip, walnuts, pineapple, and marshmallows. So midwest

Mine belongs to my husbands family, and the first time I saw it when we were still just dating, it was almost a deal breaker. Well, after I figured out what it was exactly. Now this may not be a surprise to some, but for me it was horrifying. Celery with “cheese’. Not like nice cool celery sticks with a cheesy creamy dip ala artichoke parmigiana dip, but full length celery sticks filled with bright fluorescent orange cheese stuff. I freely admit that up until that time, I was a hippie child and had never encountered this bizarre “food” thing. It was awful, horrible, not to mention hideous; served on a platter with strained canned black olives, it was (still is) vaguely Halloween like, similar to me to the spaghetti and grapes in a bowl to simulate brains in the haunted house. To my astonishment, his family at it all up. ALL of it. Regardless of the feast to come. Twenty four years later his family carries on his grandmothers tradition and they still love it. It’s part of the whole whose going to make what process.

It should be mentioned that EVERYTHING I’ve ever brought to any holiday no matter the ingredients is always labeled “Her Hippie Food”, and generally overlooked (in the kindest of ways).

It should further be mentioned that they did introduce me to the glory of “Grandpas Clam Dip”. It ONLY comes out at Thanksgiving, and my Father in Law guards the recipe fiercely. He will not share, and absolutely will NOT make it any other time of year. It’s prized by the whole clan, and once many years ago, I even witnessed a younger very sweet shy cousin (~5 years old) yell at an adult to “STOP EATING ALL THE F**K’N CLAM DIP!” then proceed to guard the bowl and devour it as fast as he could like a feral animal. I don’t know what all is in it; all I know is that it’s obscene. Cream cheese, lemon juice, scallions, horseradish, clams, Tabasco? That’s just my guess, and I assume I’ll never know. Served with only the crispiest and saltiest of kettle chips. Divine artery clogging goodness in a faded blue Pyrex bowl.

They’re a weird family, but somehow I fit right in. Go figure.

I think this is the only time I’ve found the Cup of Jo comments section to be truly nauseating… ?

My grandma use to make something called Russian Green Salad (why Russian? no idea.) with me and now I’ve become the keeper of this recipe and am charged with making it for every holiday, including Thanksgiving. It’s lime jello with more marshmallows than I care to think about plus cream cheese, lemon juice, pineapple, and nuts. It’s sweet, it’s gross, and I love it so much!

I love seeing all of these versions of weird orange jello dishes! Our family’s version is Orange Jello with Mandarin Oranges and Crushed Pineapple suspended in it, topped by a layer of Mini Marshmallows and then a layer of sweetened sour cream! My grandmother used to also add shredded cheese to the top of that, but we’ve all decided that was a little too strange and stopped at the sour cream. Surprisingly, its one of my very favorite desserts!!!

My family is Italian and we have an intense round of antipasto before we eat what I can only describe as about 20 different giant casserole rectangles full of potatoes (three different types), stuffing, green beans, etc. etc. So when I went to my husband’s siblings Thanksgiving , someone brought a single can of creamed corn, I was EXTREMELY CONFUSED. They opened the one can, dumped it out into a bowl and no one really touched it. I now understand, two years later, that this must be their Glark.

My dad is one of 10, so Thanksgiving is a massive family reunion, and everyone knows which dish they’re responsible for. My dad is the potatoes guy. Every year he brings a variety, but he absolutely must show up with green chile and cheese mashed potatoes. It always surprises the two or three family newbies/first-time guests, but it’s also always the fastest gone.

Could be a Polish thing, could be a Wisconsin thing, either way our “Glark” is sour kraut. Sure it may come from the same can one uses when heaping a forkful onto a brat, however the Thanksgiving version roasts for hours in the oven. Roasting makes it turn into pure caramelized deliciousness (thanks to the white sugar sprinkled on during the roasting process*). There are never leftovers. In fact, this dish doesn’t last nearly as long as the lingering kraut smell.

*One year I tried to use coconut sugar to make it a liittttle healthier and was almost cast out of the family!

Our glark are baked mashed potatoes consisting of cream cheese, sour cream, butter, chives and of course mashed potatoes. The richest, creamiest side dish ever. I only make it for Thanksgiving dinner and Christmas dinner. Never any other time.

we always have yorkshire pudding. no on ever cares to eat it, but it’s treated as a family member, and we can’t celebrate thanksgiving or christmas without it.

Dad’s Famous Sweet Potato Casserole
-which must be made with canned yams, Ritz crackers, walnuts, butter, and marshmallows. It tastes like dessert, but is served with the meal and it’s just not Thanksgiving without it.