Early Thoughts on Thanksgiving...

For whatever reason I’m feeling particularly excited for Thanksgiving this year. I don’t know exactly why this is, but as I think back on my Thanksgiving last year (which was spent on an overnight bus in Argentina NOT eating turkey), I guess I’m just excited to cook and have a traditional Thanksgiving meal once again. Working at Common Thread seeing thousands of squash all the time and receiving my weekly share of produce has made me excited for the chance to cook all of fall’s famous vegetables in a real kitchen with my family.

This year my family is hosting Thanksgiving for our entire extended family, something that has only ever happened once before. While it’s perhaps a little bit early to start discussing the menu with my mother, I’ve recently been interested in finding new, interesting ways to prepare a “traditional” Thanksgiving meal. Today I decided to look up all of the different ways that one can prepare a Thanksgiving turkey.

My list thus far includes: roasting, grilling, brining, smoking, steaming, rotisserie, microwaving, Turducken (a whole roasted turkey stuffed with a whole duck and a whole chicken), bacon-wrapped turkey, beer-can turkey, in a crock pot, and last but not least deep frying the bird!

I had considered many of these techniques before, but I admit that I had to look some of them up, like the turducken. Although my mother would never (ever) go for this idea, I am particularly curious to see how a deep-fried turkey would come out. I might also add that for those vegetarians out there, there are apparently also numerous ways to cook tofurkey! 

While I am very excited to help cook this year’s Thanksgiving meal, I think I am more excited for Thanksgiving to come because it is not just an ordinary meal; Thanksgiving represents a perfect example of food’s ability to bring people together in meaningful ways, and this is the aspect I am most excited for. For whatever reason, our culture has come to greatly value Thanksgiving as one of the most important family days of the year, but it’s interesting to think about the fact that Thanksgiving is also perhaps equally known for it’s food-centered qualities.