My Dream Thanksgiving Bonanza

Recipe MegaMix

Happy Sunday. This week’s newsletter is late because on Thursday, when we would normally be writing you an email, Mess Hall took the evening off to join a protest demanding the New York Times editorial board call for a ceasefire. You can read the Writer’s Bloc’s statement on the action here. The Mess Hall editorial board continues to pray and scream for a free Palestine.

Thanksgiving is nigh, and I’ll be cooking nothing. I’m taking the year off and glomming myself onto Jackson’s family’s plan. I am relieved to be making zero decisions this year past what time we leave the city and what sort of alcohol to bring as a gift and how many servings of stuffing is appropriate (three). But I’ve been wanting for months to put together a sort of dream Thanksgiving menu, made up of both recipes I love and recipes I’m eager to make.

My family doesn’t have super firm Thanksgiving traditions: until 2010, we spent every Thanksgiving (and every Christmas) at the theater we were a part of. There was turkey, green beans, stuffing, gravy, cranberry sauce, Perry’s incredible pecan pie. Traditional spread. Since then, I’ve developed a few strong opinions about Thanksgiving—namely, two chickens are better than one turkey—but have never done it the same, or even similarly, twice. It’s a deranged holiday: all that murderous history wrapped up in gratitude, a marathon of cooking, the ongoing debates over how to make turkey that’s not dry, the weight of the “family holiday” construct. I continue to be relieved not to be embroiled in the great Thanksgiving Content Churn. Let me tell you a secret: you can just do what you did last year! But then here I am offering ten new ideas. Joke’s on me. I’m grateful for you.

Herewith, my dream thanksgiving menu, based only on flavor and pleasure, not on oven strategy or make-ahead days or dietary restrictions: