When Thanksgiving rolls around in the South, people gather to enjoy delicious food, mingle with family and friends, and probably watch football. If you are hosting the celebration, it falls on you to prepare the food everyone loves and expects, present the family favorites in style, and make a house full of guests feel welcome. While food is the star attraction, creating a warm, welcoming atmosphere and a delightful ambiance makes the day special.
A Memorable Southern Thanksgiving Starts With The Food
Turkey is traditionally the main meat at a Southern Thanksgiving. While most often oven roasted to an inviting golden brown, it can be deep fried, grilled, or smoked as well. Mild temperatures make it easy to use one of these methods that are done outside. Creative cooks might inject herbs, spices, and other flavorings under the skin. For those who want to improve on a good thing, the turkey might be the main component of turducken that is a chicken inside a duck inside a turkey. For even cooking, some resort to spatchcocking, which involves butterflying, deboning, and splaying it flat. Hams often turn up on the table as well.
Regardless of how the turkey is cooked, dressing is a main side dish. Whether this bready delight is cooked inside the bird or not, it is called dressing, not stuffing. While it might be make of white bread or biscuits, cornbread dressing made from a traditional family recipe is staple on many Southern tables. Some cooks add oysters, sausage, or other ingredients to the basic dressing, while others from the Gulf Coast region may opt for shrimp and grits dressing.
Turkey feasts are always accompanied by cranberry sauce and other sides, but in the South, sides are typically a plethora of casseroles that might include green bean casserole or maybe one made of corn, squash, potatoes, or a variety of choices. Often, some of the ingredients were home grown. Sweet potato casseroles are a gooey delight that resemble dessert, as they are loaded with some combination of marshmallows, pecans, molasses, and brown sugar.
The table is often laden with other treats the family loves such as fried green tomatoes, mac and cheese, pimento cheese spread, gumbo, deviled eggs, collard greens with ham hocks, and more. Salads are likely to be ambrosia or a congealed or Jell-O salad such as Coca Cola salad. A jar of Duke’s mayonnaise is likely to be nearby and many dishes include bacon. Biscuits are likely to be found on most table.
When it is time for dessert, pecan pie reigns supreme although pumpkin, sweet potato, apple, or cream pies, and brownies are usually available too for guests to wash down with sweet tea. As guests leave the table to watch football, they leave satiated.
Create Ambiance With Copper Ceiling Lights and Lanterns
The food at a traditional Southern Thanksgiving feast is spectacular, but the presentation should be too. In most homes, the feast is delivered in style in a formal dining room. Hostesses bring out their best tableware, linens. and serving pieces to enhance the feeling of warm and welcome. If they own copper chaffing dishes, casseroles, and serving ware, the table looks even more homey! To give the proper atmosphere, they turn on the copper ceiling lights in the dining room to bathe the food in a warm glow. Since guests often congregate in in the kitchen to eat appetizers, drink, or help, copper pendants over the island or table prepare everyone for the main even – the bird of the day.
Some Southerners might take advantage of balmy weather to eat outside; setting up a buffet table or a long table to serve family style allows everyone to enjoy both the great eats and the great weather. If you home has a covered patio, you can creative the feeling of a dining room by turning on your overhead lighting. Copper lanterns are perfect for adding a traditional touch to a less traditional place to serve your holiday meal.
Always Be Ready For Guest With Copper Lanterns
Southerners are known for their hospitality and they are always ready to welcome family, friends, and neighbors who stop buy for a cup of coffee or meal. In planning a welcome place for visitors, there is no better way to giving an inviting appeal to a home than with quality copper listing fixtures. Whether you choose copper ceiling lights or wall or post/column mounted lanterns, you are setting up your home not just for holiday but for year-round cordiality.
Lantern & Scroll, which has a retail store in Charlotte, NC and an online store too, is nationally known for its reproduction of lanterns in the Carolina and Charleston style. As our motto states, lanterns create “a brilliant first impression” as folks pull into the driveway and come to the door. With gas and electric lanterns designed for interior and exterior placement, our lighting enhances your home inside and out Whether your home is a sprawling colonial in the traditional style or a more contemporary home, we have lighting collections you’ll love.
Copper Collections To Please
Many homeowners love to have a wall mounted porch light, overhead lighting in flush mount or yoke style, and yard lights to properly illuminate their property. Since our lanterns come in a range of sizes, it is easy to create a cohesive look that can even extend inside for many collections. If you want something other than the classic copper finish, you can customize your lanterns to suite your color palette with the knowledge that they are styled in hand made solid copper.
If your idea of a lantern is one with triangular sides, you might choose from our Broad Street, Tradd Street, or Charleston collections. For boxier styles with straight sides, our St. Phillips Street, Market Street, or Midtown styles are sure to please. Some collections, such as our Old Village or Vauxhall collections feature detailed finials on the top and/or bottom, while others such as our East Bay Street collection feature lattice detail.
To create a home that is provides the perfect setting for a memorable Southern Thanksgiving, Christmas, or other holiday as well as ongoing charm, plan to upgrade your lighting with copper ceiling lights from Lantern & Scroll.