I love Thanksgiving. I mean, who doesn’t? Getting together with family and friends. Two days off from work. It’s great. Plus, where I live, the temperature is in the 50s and 60s during the day. Go for a walk, a bike ride, or just enjoy being outside. It’s the perfect time of year. And of course, great food. Right?
I don’t enjoy Thanksgiving food all that much. OK, it’s manageable. Presented with a plateful of the “classics,” my mandibles will do their duty. And admittedly, I’ve overeaten at three of the last five Thanksgivings. Actually, I’m on a lifetime streak. But still, is it really that good? I don’t think so. Yet, most people rave about Thanksgiving food.
I believe there are two reasons people claim to love Thanksgiving food. For one, its nostalgic. It’s what you ate in the 90s, back when baggy pants were cool. It’s what you ate the last time you were with your great uncle. It reminds you of the good old days. As anyone who’s rewatched a favorite childhood movie (Ernest anyone?), nostalgia can only do so much, and it’s just part of the reason people love Thanksgiving. The other reason is that we just love food. This is America after all. When we love a certain food, it is the functional equivalent of saying it is not abjectly horrible. It’s binary – if it it’s not bad, we love it. That’s a low bar, and Thanksgiving food surely passes that threshold.
Whatever the reason for this false love, Thanksgiving is certainly a holiday focused on food. A holiday centered around food, well should have better food. Yet every year, we cook the same ten things. It’s like we’re on auto pilot. Not this year.
I’ve come up with a way to upgrade the Thanksgiving experience. Instead of cooking the classics, I’m going to cook my favorite foods, whether they fit into the Thanksgiving paradigm or not. No ethnic limitations. Burritos and brownies is an acceptable solution. Thai and cookies? Yes, please! Hamburgers? Yee-haw! Whatever I want, no limits.
When I want really to go all out, well, I usually go out to eat. Normally, I buy all my favorite foods. On Thanksgiving, when all the stores are closed, I’ll have to cook myself. The plan is to test out recipes of my favorite foods. I’ll have to test recipes leading up to the big day because I want the lineup locked down. I don’t want to be fooling around with a recipe on the big day. There’s just too much on the line.
I’ll test possible recipes each week until Thanksgiving. I’ll test recipes in three categories of food: main dish/meat, side dish/breads, and desserts. To the victor goes the spoils, and the spoils will be consumed by me. Each week I’ll write about the recipe of that week and make a cursory year or nay selection. Then, the week before Thanksgiving, I’ll finalize my choices.
There is a possibility that none of the recipes will work, and I default to Papa Murphy’s take-n-bake pizza and Betty Crocker fudge brownies. But that is a risk I’m willing to take, and that would still beat the classics.