A Thanksgiving like no other
What are you doing for Thanksgiving? Chances are that whatever you have planned, it’s going to be different from your usual. In light of the ongoing surge of Covid-19 cases, many people are choosing not to gather with family and friends this year, or to do so in smaller groupings. Some who get together will take precautions that will make the occasion unique (a friend of mine is hoping to drive home to Illinois and gather with her parents and her two siblings’ families—entirely outdoors).
It’ll be sad not to see loved ones this year, especially folks we’d hoped to see, or whom we’ve gone so long without seeing already. Missing those in-person connections hurts. But if there’s an upside to all this with respect to Thanksgiving, it’s that the holiday lends itself to ad-hoc arrangements. In fact, I would argue that there’s something quintessentially Thanksgiving about making do with what you have, and including whoever happens to be around (this year, that’d be “already in your pod”).
Around here, to be honest, I’ve been coping with the evolving strangeness of this holiday season by not planning a Thanksgiving meal . . . yet. Yes, there will be a festive meal; yes, there will be fewer people than normal. Part of me wants to lean in to the unusualness of the 2020 holiday by eschewing traditional Thanksgiving food entirely.
The other day, I remembered the first Thanksgiving I spent away from home. I was a freshman in college, and flying across the country for a long weekend so soon before Christmas seemed out of the question. That year, I gathered up about ten other students in a similar situation, and I executed a homemade vegetarian lasagna in the kitchen of my dorm. Someone provided a magnum of cheap red wine, and someone else made a pie. It was a terrific Thanksgiving. (The lasagna recipe was my mom’s, but very much like this garden vegetable lasagna from Aberdeen’s Kitchen.)
What else would make a good off-brand Thanksgiving dish? I think anything hearty, flavorful, and capable of eliciting some oohs and aahs when goes on the table. A seafood paella, laced with saffron, like this one from Jo Cooks, would do nicely.
Dessert-wise, there will be pie every other year. What about channeling your energies into something different? I’ve wanted to make trifle since seeing it on season 1 of The Great British Baking Show. It isn’t very American, but if there’s a year when all bets are off, it’s this one. Amanda’s Cookin’ has one that looks just the right amount of difficult for a first-timer. Much easier to make (foolproof, really), delicious, and beautifully presented, there’s never a wrong occasion for Frankie’s Spuntino wine-stewed prunes with mascarpone.
Then again, Thanksgiving is a harvest festival, and it’s hard to resist the fruits of the season, and the more traditional dinner in which they result. With fewer people at the table, I might attempt a turkey main dish based on less than a whole bird, like an herbed turkey breast, such as this brined one from Salt Pepper Skillet, or even a large turkey pot pie.
Roast some delicata squash á la Love and Lemons. Counter the sweetness with a turnip-and-potato mash. Warm up the house, and make it taste like 2019 again—or, let’s hope, like a preview of the big gathering you’ll have in 2021.
Do you have an unusual Thanksgiving story or meal in your past? Share it in the comments.
In other news, we took Trivet Recipes live and opened it to submissions this week. It’s been fun watching as people sign up and the entries come rolling in. A few reminders: though we expect most people to use Trivet Recipes to share their own creations, the site is set up to allow any user to share any recipe, from anywhere on the web. You’re welcome to post as often as once a day. And if you have technical problems with registering, posting, or anything else, don’t hesitate to contact us.
Most of all, enjoy, tell a friend, and keep in touch!
To close out, if you need more inspiration to get in the minimalistic-holiday frame of mind, I recommend this thread on Twitter by Dylan Morrison. He writes about the bad behavior he endured for two years of selling special holiday meal orders at a grocery store chain.
Not only a plea for us to stay home and be safe, it’s a reminder to give thanks—real thanks—to service workers, “all of whom, i promise you, have seen the worst of humankind every holiday season and kept helping you anyway.”
See you in a couple weeks.
Trivet Recipes is a sharing site where food lovers can post recipes from anywhere on the web. To save and share content, create a free account and start posting today. And stay tuned. We plan to launch a food blogging platform, Trivet, in 2021.