Thanksgiving recipes from Alice's Restaurant

You can get anything you want from Alice's Restaurant

Just as soon as you hear the song, it will go round and round in your head for the whole month of November. So gather your friends and prepare your feast. Get ready to trip down memory lane and watch the movie again.

It's just as tasty as Alice May Brock's incredible cooking showcased in the movie Alice's Restaurant. Released in 1969, Alice's Restaurant is the quintessential Thanksgiving movie for anyone that ever had anything to do with the hippie movement and the Vietnam war protest.

A few years back, we had the pleasure of meeting Geoff Outlaw, Arlo's sidekick in the movie and a more remarkable person would be very hard to find. If you look in the dictionary under 'Hippy', you'll see Geoff's photo.

Geoff's been all up and down the North and South American continents in an old Toyota Land Cruiser that sits today in his yard. He's played mandolins, guitars, and sung the blues for ages.

He counts so many well known celebrities as his friends that it's easier to list who he doesn't know than who he does. He even knew the late, great, Jimi Hendrix.

From the Cookbook by Alice May Brock:

Lightly saute in a melted stick of butter 1 or 2 finely chopped onions and maybe some garlic. Mix this with 3 or 4 cups of bread crumbs, salt and pepper, and some seasonings - thyme, sage, fennel seed, or anything you think is right. You can also add a few beaten eggs, but that's up to you. Moisten all this with 1/2 cup or more of some liquid: water, broth or old gravy.

There are all kinds of things you can add to a basic stuffing - like berries, cooked apricots or prunes; oranges, nuts, raisins. Chopped celery is nice, so is an apple. Corn stuffing is made with (surprise!) a can of corn. You can also add mushrooms, chestnuts, and chopped cooked liver, sausage or other meat.

Or maybe you can make stuffing any way you want!

From the cookbook by Alice May Brock:

Preheat your oven to 325°. Take a good-sized chicken or turkey ... and grease the breast with butter or oil. Or place a few bacon strips across the chest. Put the bird in a roasting pan or on a roasting rack with a roasting pan underneath. Put it in the oven. It takes about 20 minutes per pound to cook. If you have stuffing inside, do it longer - 40 minutes per pound won't hurt - and baste it with the juices in the pan. Anyway, you can tell when it's done when its legs wiggle freely and the meat pulls back from the feet. Also, you can stick a fork in the thigh and if the juices run out clear, it's supposed to be done.

I prefer the bacon slices on top myself.  You can wrap the turkey and bacon with heavy foil and steam the turkey until moist and juicy. You won't have to baste it if you cover it with bacon and foil. But you will have to brown the bacon topped turkey afterwards for an hour or so after you finish steaming. But if you prefer to baste, well do that then!

As you know, Alice's Restaurant isn't about the song anymore than Turkey is about Thanksgiving.

The movie is about the peace movement and the socio-political climate of the 60's and the Vietnam war and government intrusion and anarchy. Those of us that lived during that time in our country's history will remember.

See the movie, listen to the song, and leave me some comments on how the 60's compare with today's trials and tribulations. Then let's give thanks for our friends, family, and country!