Speaker 1: Welcome to desperately devoted Join us as we explore the
Speaker 1: human experience through the lens of the iconic show Desperate Housewives.
Speaker 2: I'm Terry Hatcher, I'm Andrea Bowen, and I'm a Merson.
Speaker 3: Tanni, Josh, you guys. Okay, it's Thanksgiving. I love Thanksgiving.
Speaker 1: Where does it rank for you in terms of your
Speaker 1: favorite holidays? Is it like really top three?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it's top three.
Speaker 3: And I have to say I feel I feel morally
Speaker 3: complicated about it because of what it represents, okay, in
Speaker 3: America's history. But I love the now in our present day,
Speaker 3: the carved out time to really sit down, carved it's
Speaker 3: unintended with the Turkey, to really sit down and think
Speaker 3: about what we are grateful for and reflect. Also, I
Speaker 3: think I just I love November. I love Autumn. I
Speaker 3: love when the leaves change colors. And I think in
Speaker 3: this season of change and reflection, to get to gather
Speaker 3: around a meal and share community that isn't like based
Speaker 3: around getting gifts or giving gifts. It's more about the
Speaker 3: gift of being present and having a meal together.
Speaker 4: And I just think it's really special.
Speaker 5: Well, I think when you're on a show like Desperate Housewives,
Speaker 5: and holidays come around, you're just thankful to have a
Speaker 5: couple days off.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true. Actually, I was just thinking about how
Speaker 1: a huge part of my Thanksgiving is waking up and
Speaker 1: watching the Thanksgiving Day Parade, which I am lucky enough
Speaker 1: to say I got to perform on when I was
Speaker 1: a seven year old. I was doing Sound of Music
Speaker 1: at the time, and they had us on a float.
Speaker 1: We had a Sound of Music float, and you know,
Speaker 1: we stopped right in front of Macy's and Harold Square
Speaker 1: and we performed. It was freezing, it was like record
Speaker 1: breaking winter that year, and people who had lined up,
Speaker 1: they line up at like three in the morning were
Speaker 1: tossing us those handwarmers to tuck into our gloves because
Speaker 1: it was a bunch of kids on a float and
Speaker 1: we were up early. And yeah, but I'm with you, Emerson.
Speaker 1: I love what Thanksgiving has become now, and I love,
Speaker 1: obviously the chance to express gratitude. I will be expressing
Speaker 1: gratitude for both of you, and for this podcast, and
Speaker 1: for I have to say, for Desperate Housewives. When I
Speaker 1: think of the role that Desperate Housewives has actually played
Speaker 1: in my life. Here I sit twenty one years after
Speaker 1: getting that job with Terry, who has been in my
Speaker 1: life for so long and in such a powerful, beautiful,
Speaker 1: special way, and Emerson, who I've gotten to watch grow
Speaker 1: up and grow up alongside of in a weird series
Speaker 1: of events. It brought me my husband, you know, I
Speaker 1: mean really yeah, the show has just so much has
Speaker 1: brought me so much emotional, enriching wealth, and I feel
Speaker 1: super grateful for it. And so it's a.
Speaker 5: Good, you know, thing to reflect on that. Like sometimes
Speaker 5: when you're in something, you don't realize how great it
Speaker 5: is and you get like twenty years later and you
Speaker 5: look back and you think, wow, that was a pretty
Speaker 5: amazing opportunity and you can see all the things that
Speaker 5: it afforded you, you know, personally and experience wise and
Speaker 5: all of that. I love Thanksgiving also. We will be
Speaker 5: going around the table and everybody always says like what
Speaker 5: they're grateful for, whether it's that year or just like
Speaker 5: in the moment. But the other reason I love it
Speaker 5: is because of the food. Because you know, I show
Speaker 5: people I love them through food. I'm sure there's been
Speaker 5: plenty of times, as James Denton mentioned, and I think
Speaker 5: Richard Bergie mentioned it that I would bring food to set.
Speaker 5: I would bring banana bread to set. That was always
Speaker 5: a classic for me.
Speaker 4: You make your great banana bread.
Speaker 5: Thank you very much, honey. I'm it's it's one of
Speaker 5: the great foods. Not necessarily a Thanksgiving food, but it is.
Speaker 5: It's a it's an anti food waste food. So like
Speaker 5: when your bananas start to turn brown, instead of throwing
Speaker 5: them away, you peel them and you freeze them, and
Speaker 5: so then you have a bunch of basically like frozen
Speaker 5: bananas that can also second as a pretty significant weapon
Speaker 5: if anything ever happens in your household.
Speaker 1: Speaking of brown food, I feel like Thanksgiving tables often
Speaker 1: feature a lot of what they call brown food.
Speaker 3: Well, that's because the leaves have changed colors and everything
Speaker 3: is brown.
Speaker 1: That's true, it's a very brown season. But I as
Speaker 1: a fellow person who loves to host and cook and entertain,
Speaker 1: I bet you have some great Thanksgiving recipes or tips
Speaker 1: tricks on hosting around Thanksgiving.
Speaker 2: You care well.
Speaker 5: My biggest trick is time sheets. When I went to
Speaker 5: cooking school at the Court on Blue, that was the
Speaker 5: biggest tool that I learned was time sheets. So when
Speaker 5: you come to my kitchen on a big holiday event,
Speaker 5: you will see taped to all the walls. You know,
Speaker 5: eleven oh five, this happens, eleven sixteen, this happens, you know.
Speaker 2: And so I have that tip.
Speaker 5: I also have the prep tip, which is just like
Speaker 5: before your day starts the day before, get everything measured,
Speaker 5: get everything chopped, get everything like sorted, so that that
Speaker 5: is all ready to go.
Speaker 2: My two big dishes that I have found, I.
Speaker 4: Was gonna say, wait, just to jump in.
Speaker 3: Yes, I think your third tip that I have to
Speaker 3: throw in as someone who stands there with you and
Speaker 3: does all of the prep the day before. My mom's
Speaker 3: third Thanksgiving tip should be duck fat. Oh yeah, she
Speaker 3: cooks everything in duck fat. There's duck fat in the stuffing,
Speaker 3: there's duck fat under the skin of the turkey. And
Speaker 3: the night before we buy a bunch of duck breasts
Speaker 3: and we render out the duck fat ourselves, and so
Speaker 3: it's fresh the next day to use for while you're
Speaker 3: cooking and basting and in place of butter in a
Speaker 3: lot of places. And then the best part is we
Speaker 3: get to duck breast the night before Thanksgiving that we
Speaker 3: normally eat with our hands standing around the kitchen island
Speaker 3: watching a movie.
Speaker 5: Such a beautiful I didn't intend to tell this, but
Speaker 5: it is just such a beautiful memory last year specifically, so,
Speaker 5: my dad has dementia, and you never know with that,
Speaker 5: like what his ability to sort of stay in the
Speaker 5: present moment is going to be, what kind of memories
Speaker 5: he's going to hang on to. But for my whole life,
Speaker 5: he would make a pecan pie at Thanksgiving and he
Speaker 5: learned to do that from his mother in Oklahoma, and
Speaker 5: so he has very, very heart rooted memories of pecan pie.
Speaker 5: And so last year, Emerson and I asked him, could
Speaker 5: we bring you over and the three of us Emerson
Speaker 5: can help you make the pecan pie while my mom's
Speaker 5: doing all the rendering of the duck fat and all
Speaker 5: the other preparations. And he didn't quite remember everything. You
Speaker 5: helped him through it, right.
Speaker 3: Well, yes, but the good news is the recipe that
Speaker 3: his mom has been making since the thirties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, is the.
Speaker 3: Recipe from the Kara Syrup on the back of the
Speaker 3: Karrosyru classic jar. I mean, we're not a fancy household
Speaker 3: at all. So yes, he didn't remember it all, but
Speaker 3: there was Kyr.
Speaker 1: Just don't have to be fancified. They are just good.
Speaker 5: And so they Grandpa and Emerson made the pecan pie together,
Speaker 5: and I was doing the duck breast, and then at
Speaker 5: the end of it, we all like when the pie
Speaker 5: was done, we sat down at the table and we
Speaker 5: and we just like you know, picked it out of
Speaker 5: the pan basically like I slice.
Speaker 2: Because I don't.
Speaker 5: Sometimes I'll use some of the duck breast in the stuffing,
Speaker 5: but mostly she's right, it's about the fat.
Speaker 2: So that's what I was going to say.
Speaker 5: For the turkey. I brine my turkey. I totally ripped
Speaker 5: off Martha Stewart's Brian, so look that up. It's a
Speaker 5: wet Brian. But I use really good wine. That's my trick.
Speaker 5: I don't skimp on the wine. I've always heard that actually,
Speaker 5: when you use your wine and cooking, sometimes people think like, oh,
Speaker 5: I'll just use this shitty wine that I wouldn't drink
Speaker 5: in my cooking.
Speaker 2: But it's the opposite.
Speaker 5: You don't want to use wine that you wouldn't want
Speaker 5: to be drinking. So I use a good wine in
Speaker 5: my Brian. I probably add like a few I might
Speaker 5: add juniper berries to my Brian. I'm not sure Martha
Speaker 5: does that, but anything Martha is great, by the way.
Speaker 5: So I do brin my turkey. Then I also do
Speaker 5: take it out and let it get to room temp
Speaker 5: and dry it really well.
Speaker 2: And then I also stuff a bunch of duck fat
Speaker 2: under the skin.
Speaker 4: So that's I'm salivating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's kind of my thing with that.
Speaker 5: My stuffing that I love that I think are things
Speaker 5: that I've sort of originated. I chop up very finely.
Speaker 5: I use chestnuts in there, I use churizzo, I use pears,
Speaker 5: and I find that combination of heat and sweet. I'm
Speaker 5: always like, I'm not afraid of a little bit of
Speaker 5: fruit together with a meat protein. I think that that
Speaker 5: can really lend itself to great flavor.
Speaker 3: Another one of the big stuffing tips in our house
Speaker 3: that has kind of fallen as being my responsibility because
Speaker 3: I live near one of our favorite bakeries, in La Bread.
Speaker 4: Lounge, which is downtown.
Speaker 3: I will pick up a few days before Thanksgiving a
Speaker 3: bunch of fresh sour dough and whole wheat loaves, and
Speaker 3: then I will cube them all and we make our
Speaker 3: stuffing breadcrumbs from scratch. As we cut them up into
Speaker 3: little cubes and put nice olive oil and.
Speaker 2: Roast, and so you should peper house.
Speaker 5: There's like cookie sheets all over all the different room
Speaker 5: tables with bread right, it's cookie sheets covered with bread head.
Speaker 3: I do think the fresh the fresh creutons that you
Speaker 3: make yourself do make a huge difference, but you ultimately
Speaker 3: go to put.
Speaker 5: It in the stuff and they don't have all the
Speaker 5: crappy levels of like salt and stuff that you get
Speaker 5: in the box thing.
Speaker 1: I have a new addition to my every year I
Speaker 1: must make list for Thanksgiving, which is a salty maple pie.
Speaker 1: It's a custard based pie. It is from a bakery
Speaker 1: in Detroit called Sister Pie. And it is now requested
Speaker 1: every year that I make this pie, and I think
Speaker 1: it will be until until I die. I think I
Speaker 1: will make it every year because it is that good.
Speaker 1: It's that great combination of because it's salty and it's
Speaker 1: and it's maple y.
Speaker 2: That sounds amazing. It is.
Speaker 1: It really is so good and so now that we.
Speaker 2: Have so close to each other, just don't mind me
Speaker 2: if you hear.
Speaker 1: On your door show thanks amazing, and it sounds like
Speaker 1: we have much to be grateful for and delicious meals
Speaker 1: in our future.
Speaker 2: And you know, it's a funny thing.
Speaker 5: I don't really remember ever celebrating Thanksgiving necessarily as part
Speaker 5: of Desperate Housewives, and I'm not sure if it's just
Speaker 5: because I don't remember things, which is I totally own
Speaker 5: that I don't remember anything, but I feel like there
Speaker 5: was at least a thing at the beginning. And tell
Speaker 5: me if this feels familiar to you, that we tried
Speaker 5: to stay away from weather and seasons because Mark's idea
Speaker 5: was that with steria, Lane was just everywhere and nowhere
Speaker 5: at the same time, and so I think eventually we
Speaker 5: got it whittled down to the Eagle State, but that
Speaker 5: wasn't for a while. I think you're right there was,
Speaker 5: and the things like the tornadoes and the big disasters,
Speaker 5: those didn't happen until later seasons like initially.
Speaker 4: And those could happen anytime of year.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's true, but I know the same day, the
Speaker 1: same client get the same weather.
Speaker 5: So I don't really remember the character celebrating Thanksgiving.
Speaker 2: But there was that episode.
Speaker 5: Where where Brie pretends for it to be Christmas for
Speaker 5: Zach and then I made that yam recipe.
Speaker 2: You guys need to go look that up.
Speaker 5: If you didn't look up my yam video, go to
Speaker 5: my Instagram, because that is a highlight dish. And the
Speaker 5: secret there is wrapping each yam individually in foil, baking
Speaker 5: it at four hundred until the sugar juices turned brown
Speaker 5: and begin to bubble out of the cracks of the foil,
Speaker 5: and then you take it out and you sort of
Speaker 5: like just scoop all that down into the bowl and
Speaker 5: you get all that caramelized sugar.
Speaker 2: That's the trick.
Speaker 1: I'm officially too pregnant to listen to that type of
Speaker 1: luscious description of food. It is just someone find me
Speaker 1: something to eat.
Speaker 4: Well, I'm gonna say, I fear me.
Speaker 3: It's normally my job just scoop out those yams and
Speaker 3: then I'm left with all these amazing caramelized dam skins
Speaker 3: that I'm just like eating.
Speaker 4: You go the rest of the preps.
Speaker 3: Okay, wait, is there a Thanksgiving dish that you hate?
Speaker 4: Like hot take? Don't put this on my Thanksgiving too.
Speaker 1: I mean, I hate to say this now after everything
Speaker 1: we've discussed, but I am not a huge stuffing person.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry to break your heart.
Speaker 5: True.
Speaker 2: Problem, but you could change your mind okay, choun.
Speaker 5: So many things I could say with the word stuff
Speaker 5: that sound wrong, so I'm not going to do.
Speaker 4: It, and she will do all of them to change
Speaker 4: your mind.
Speaker 1: What about you, quick?
Speaker 3: Oh gosh, Okay, Honestly, I am not a big I
Speaker 3: know we just said the great candy jams, but I
Speaker 3: am not a big yams.
Speaker 4: With the marshmallow on top. It's like too sweet for me.
Speaker 3: I am a big stuffing girl, bravy on everything like
Speaker 3: savory savory.
Speaker 1: So do you have any just absolute nose on the Thanksgiving?
Speaker 5: My no is not having three servings of everything, so
Speaker 5: that's great.
Speaker 2: I have no nose. I have no nose. I have
Speaker 2: like I have.
Speaker 5: I wish you could just wheelbarrow me to bed at
Speaker 5: the end of it because I'm so full and so
Speaker 5: happy and so full of gratitude. So no I've got
Speaker 5: I've got no news. I eat everything.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I love that. I am so.
Speaker 4: Excited to eat so much this Thanksgiving.
Speaker 5: And I am grateful for both of you. I'm grateful
Speaker 5: that we've had this opportunity to do this podcast and
Speaker 5: to share with our listeners, and we wish everybody a
Speaker 5: happy Thanksgiving and hit us up if you need more
Speaker 5: food tricks, because I think we've got them, and we'll
Speaker 5: see you next week.
Speaker 4: Because as always, we are desperately devoted to you.