Welcome to desperately devoted Join us as we explore the human experience through the lens of the iconic show Desperate Housewives.
I'm Terry Hatcher, I'm Andrea Bowen, and I'm a Merson.
Tanni, Josh, you guys. Okay, it's Thanksgiving. I love Thanksgiving.
Where does it rank for you in terms of your favorite holidays? Is it like really top three?
Oh?
Yeah, I think it's top three.
And I have to say I feel I feel morally complicated about it because of what it represents, okay, in America's history. But I love the now in our present day, the carved out time to really sit down, carved it's unintended with the Turkey, to really sit down and think about what we are grateful for and reflect. Also, I think I just I love November. I love Autumn. I
love when the leaves change colors. And I think in this season of change and reflection, to get to gather around a meal and share community that isn't like based around getting gifts or giving gifts. It's more about the gift of being present and having a meal together.
And I just think it's really special.
Well, I think when you're on a show like Desperate Housewives, and holidays come around, you're just thankful to have a couple days off.
Yeah, that's true. Actually, I was just thinking about how a huge part of my Thanksgiving is waking up and watching the Thanksgiving Day Parade, which I am lucky enough to say I got to perform on when I was a seven year old. I was doing Sound of Music at the time, and they had us on a float. We had a Sound of Music float, and you know, we stopped right in front of Macy's and Harold Square
and we performed. It was freezing, it was like record breaking winter that year, and people who had lined up, they line up at like three in the morning were tossing us those handwarmers to tuck into our gloves because it was a bunch of kids on a float and we were up early. And yeah, but I'm with you, Emerson. I love what Thanksgiving has become now, and I love, obviously the chance to express gratitude. I will be expressing gratitude for both of you, and for this podcast, and
for I have to say, for Desperate Housewives. When I think of the role that Desperate Housewives has actually played in my life. Here I sit twenty one years after getting that job with Terry, who has been in my life for so long and in such a powerful, beautiful, special way, and Emerson, who I've gotten to watch grow up and grow up alongside of in a weird series
of events. It brought me my husband, you know, I mean really yeah, the show has just so much has brought me so much emotional, enriching wealth, and I feel super grateful for it. And so it's a.
Good, you know, thing to reflect on that. Like sometimes when you're in something, you don't realize how great it is and you get like twenty years later and you look back and you think, wow, that was a pretty amazing opportunity and you can see all the things that it afforded you, you know, personally and experience wise and all of that. I love Thanksgiving also. We will be going around the table and everybody always says like what they're grateful for, whether it's that year or just like
in the moment. But the other reason I love it is because of the food. Because you know, I show people I love them through food. I'm sure there's been plenty of times, as James Denton mentioned, and I think Richard Bergie mentioned it that I would bring food to set. I would bring banana bread to set. That was always a classic for me.
You make your great banana bread.
Thank you very much, honey. I'm it's it's one of the great foods. Not necessarily a Thanksgiving food, but it is. It's a it's an anti food waste food. So like when your bananas start to turn brown, instead of throwing them away, you peel them and you freeze them, and so then you have a bunch of basically like frozen bananas that can also second as a pretty significant weapon if anything ever happens in your household.
Speaking of brown food, I feel like Thanksgiving tables often feature a lot of what they call brown food.
Well, that's because the leaves have changed colors and everything is brown.
That's true, it's a very brown season. But I as a fellow person who loves to host and cook and entertain, I bet you have some great Thanksgiving recipes or tips tricks on hosting around Thanksgiving.
You care well.
My biggest trick is time sheets. When I went to cooking school at the Court on Blue, that was the biggest tool that I learned was time sheets. So when you come to my kitchen on a big holiday event, you will see taped to all the walls. You know, eleven oh five, this happens, eleven sixteen, this happens, you know.
And so I have that tip.
I also have the prep tip, which is just like before your day starts the day before, get everything measured, get everything chopped, get everything like sorted, so that that is all ready to go.
My two big dishes that I have found, I.
Was gonna say, wait, just to jump in.
Yes, I think your third tip that I have to throw in as someone who stands there with you and does all of the prep the day before. My mom's third Thanksgiving tip should be duck fat. Oh yeah, she cooks everything in duck fat. There's duck fat in the stuffing,
there's duck fat under the skin of the turkey. And the night before we buy a bunch of duck breasts and we render out the duck fat ourselves, and so it's fresh the next day to use for while you're cooking and basting and in place of butter in a lot of places. And then the best part is we get to duck breast the night before Thanksgiving that we normally eat with our hands standing around the kitchen island watching a movie.
Such a beautiful I didn't intend to tell this, but it is just such a beautiful memory last year specifically, so, my dad has dementia, and you never know with that, like what his ability to sort of stay in the present moment is going to be, what kind of memories he's going to hang on to. But for my whole life, he would make a pecan pie at Thanksgiving and he learned to do that from his mother in Oklahoma, and so he has very, very heart rooted memories of pecan pie.
And so last year, Emerson and I asked him, could we bring you over and the three of us Emerson can help you make the pecan pie while my mom's doing all the rendering of the duck fat and all the other preparations. And he didn't quite remember everything. You helped him through it, right.
Well, yes, but the good news is the recipe that his mom has been making since the thirties.
Yeah, is the.
Recipe from the Kara Syrup on the back of the Karrosyru classic jar. I mean, we're not a fancy household at all. So yes, he didn't remember it all, but there was Kyr.
Just don't have to be fancified. They are just good.
And so they Grandpa and Emerson made the pecan pie together, and I was doing the duck breast, and then at the end of it, we all like when the pie was done, we sat down at the table and we and we just like you know, picked it out of the pan basically like I slice.
Because I don't.
Sometimes I'll use some of the duck breast in the stuffing, but mostly she's right, it's about the fat.
So that's what I was going to say.
For the turkey. I brine my turkey. I totally ripped off Martha Stewart's Brian, so look that up. It's a wet Brian. But I use really good wine. That's my trick. I don't skimp on the wine. I've always heard that actually, when you use your wine and cooking, sometimes people think like, oh, I'll just use this shitty wine that I wouldn't drink in my cooking.
But it's the opposite.
You don't want to use wine that you wouldn't want to be drinking. So I use a good wine in my Brian. I probably add like a few I might add juniper berries to my Brian. I'm not sure Martha does that, but anything Martha is great, by the way. So I do brin my turkey. Then I also do take it out and let it get to room temp and dry it really well.
And then I also stuff a bunch of duck fat under the skin.
So that's I'm salivating.
Yeah, that's kind of my thing with that.
My stuffing that I love that I think are things that I've sort of originated. I chop up very finely. I use chestnuts in there, I use churizzo, I use pears, and I find that combination of heat and sweet. I'm always like, I'm not afraid of a little bit of fruit together with a meat protein. I think that that can really lend itself to great flavor.
Another one of the big stuffing tips in our house that has kind of fallen as being my responsibility because I live near one of our favorite bakeries, in La Bread.
Lounge, which is downtown.
I will pick up a few days before Thanksgiving a bunch of fresh sour dough and whole wheat loaves, and then I will cube them all and we make our stuffing breadcrumbs from scratch. As we cut them up into little cubes and put nice olive oil and.
Roast, and so you should peper house.
There's like cookie sheets all over all the different room tables with bread right, it's cookie sheets covered with bread head.
I do think the fresh the fresh creutons that you make yourself do make a huge difference, but you ultimately go to put.
It in the stuff and they don't have all the crappy levels of like salt and stuff that you get in the box thing.
I have a new addition to my every year I must make list for Thanksgiving, which is a salty maple pie. It's a custard based pie. It is from a bakery in Detroit called Sister Pie. And it is now requested every year that I make this pie, and I think it will be until until I die. I think I will make it every year because it is that good. It's that great combination of because it's salty and it's and it's maple y.
That sounds amazing. It is.
It really is so good and so now that we.
Have so close to each other, just don't mind me if you hear.
On your door show thanks amazing, and it sounds like we have much to be grateful for and delicious meals in our future.
And you know, it's a funny thing.
I don't really remember ever celebrating Thanksgiving necessarily as part of Desperate Housewives, and I'm not sure if it's just because I don't remember things, which is I totally own that I don't remember anything, but I feel like there
was at least a thing at the beginning. And tell me if this feels familiar to you, that we tried to stay away from weather and seasons because Mark's idea was that with steria, Lane was just everywhere and nowhere at the same time, and so I think eventually we got it whittled down to the Eagle State, but that wasn't for a while. I think you're right there was, and the things like the tornadoes and the big disasters, those didn't happen until later seasons like initially.
And those could happen anytime of year.
Yes, that's true, but I know the same day, the same client get the same weather.
So I don't really remember the character celebrating Thanksgiving.
But there was that episode.
Where where Brie pretends for it to be Christmas for Zach and then I made that yam recipe.
You guys need to go look that up.
If you didn't look up my yam video, go to my Instagram, because that is a highlight dish. And the secret there is wrapping each yam individually in foil, baking it at four hundred until the sugar juices turned brown and begin to bubble out of the cracks of the foil, and then you take it out and you sort of like just scoop all that down into the bowl and you get all that caramelized sugar.
That's the trick.
I'm officially too pregnant to listen to that type of luscious description of food. It is just someone find me something to eat.
Well, I'm gonna say, I fear me.
It's normally my job just scoop out those yams and then I'm left with all these amazing caramelized dam skins that I'm just like eating.
You go the rest of the preps.
Okay, wait, is there a Thanksgiving dish that you hate?
Like hot take? Don't put this on my Thanksgiving too.
I mean, I hate to say this now after everything we've discussed, but I am not a huge stuffing person. I'm sorry to break your heart.
True.
Problem, but you could change your mind okay, choun.
So many things I could say with the word stuff that sound wrong, so I'm not going to do.
It, and she will do all of them to change your mind.
What about you, quick?
Oh gosh, Okay, Honestly, I am not a big I know we just said the great candy jams, but I am not a big yams.
With the marshmallow on top. It's like too sweet for me.
I am a big stuffing girl, bravy on everything like savory savory.
So do you have any just absolute nose on the Thanksgiving?
My no is not having three servings of everything, so that's great.
I have no nose. I have no nose. I have like I have.
I wish you could just wheelbarrow me to bed at the end of it because I'm so full and so happy and so full of gratitude. So no I've got I've got no news. I eat everything.
Yeah, well, I love that. I am so.
Excited to eat so much this Thanksgiving.
And I am grateful for both of you. I'm grateful that we've had this opportunity to do this podcast and to share with our listeners, and we wish everybody a happy Thanksgiving and hit us up if you need more food tricks, because I think we've got them, and we'll see you next week.
Because as always, we are desperately devoted to you.