My Thanksgiving Menu
Everything I'm making this year (and next year and the year after that...)
Earlier this week, when I was getting a hair cut, my stylist Mariana asked, “So what are you making for Thanksgiving? Anything interesting?” I’m not sure if she added “anything interesting” because she knows I write about food for a living or because she was just making small talk, but I think my resounding NO might have taken her aback. For me, the last thing Thanksgiving should ever be is “interesting.” The first thing it should be? Traditional, which is to say consistent and comforting. My kids and nieces and nephews don’t start texting me about the holiday weeks in advance because they can’t wait to try something new and innovative — they look forward to Thanksgiving because they can’t wait to slip into the rhythm of the day, with its familiar buttery-oniony smells wafting through the chaotic, family-packed kitchen, their dinner swimming in rich, it-can-only-be-Thanksgiving gravy.
So yes, I love that there’s no pressure to introduce some interesting, knock-your-socks off dish, but this does not mean that our feast doesn’t absolutely crush it. (As Abby says, if our Thanksgiving line-up were an album, it would be No Skips.) I mean, maybe we’ll switch up a bourbon pecan pie for a maple bourbon pecan pie, or batch Negronis instead of making a festive Sangria, but in general, we sit down to the same recipes every year. Why would we mess with something that works?
Here is the all-star line-up, with links…
