NEW ENGLAND TRADITIONS grew up in a family who moved from Boston, Massachusetts to San Diego, California. Needless to say, Thanksgiving has always been an interesting blend of staid New England cooking, blended with some laid-back California traditions with a baby-boom mother mentality of frozen and canned foods as part of the tradition.

My mother learned traditional New England cooking from her mother, and so we still ate a lot of "pot roast" and "New England boiled dinners" complete with over-boiled cabbage and corned beef, for Sunday dinner. My mother still made real Boston baked beans and brown bread for occasional Saturday night suppers, too.

Thanksgiving was always a big deal in our house, even though the rest of the family was back East, and there was only us to celebrate the day. Sometimes we would invite friends who also did not have family in San Diego. Sometimes we would...
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