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Turkey-day cheats

Savvy use of supermarket products keeps day fuss-free

By Bill Daley | Chicago Tribune • Published November 26, 2008

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Thanksgiving dinner conjures up Currier & Ives memories of rosy-cheeked grannies, aided by a phalanx of aunties, sisters and assorted female cousins mustering up a veritable groaning board of goodies while the menfolk chaw away the hours in the front parlor.

But reality can be quite different.

Don't despair.

You don't have to splurge on a fancy dinner to evoke the true spirit and foods of Thanksgiving past. You still can gather the family around the table and give thanks for what you have and for being together and for pulling a wonderful meal together without getting crazed.

Just be prepared to cheat. A little.

Supermarkets, delis, caterers and restaurants all sell a variety of precooked, ready-to-cook and assemble-X-Y-Z-and-cook dishes you can place on your holiday table. That can lighten the load so you can concentrate on the Thanksgiving dish that really matters to you, be it the roast turkey, the mashed potatoes, the pumpkin pie or the chili-cheese nacho pie you serve up with the football game on TV.

My mother cooked like this for years. She would jazz up packets of frozen onions in white sauce, add her own vegetables to commercially prepared stuffing mixes and pour a can of chicken broth into pan juices to make a quick gravy.

Only trouble is, she tended to do this all rather sneakily, as though she was vaguely ashamed not to have achieved the all-American meal the old-fashioned way.

That's why it is so refreshing to hear Jacques Pepin come clean. The French-born, classically trained chef — once in the service of Charles de Gaulle — and author of more than two dozen cookbooks and host of 11 television cooking series admits he uses frozen peas, canned peaches and rotisserie chicken in his kitchen.

"I use the supermarket as a prep cook," Pepin said during an appearance in Chicago last month to promote his new public television series and cookbook, both named "Jacques Pepin: More Fast Food My Way."

Pepin sees no contradiction in using ingredients like this. It's a way of cooking that is easy, fast, economical and healthier, he told the lunch crowd.