Did you know Thanksgiving is this week?

Thanksgiving, the most sumptuous and emotionally charged of holidays is this Thursday. I’m hoping that you are looking forward to it and have plans that give you pleasant anticipation, though I know that many folks are driven to various coping mechanisms to deal with the stress and turmoil of the day; including but not limited to drinking alcohol, overeating, and watching the Dallas Cowboys. I am extremely fortunate that I’ve had many good Thanksgivings over the years with varying combinations of family, friends, and loved ones. I am a connoisseur of the holiday and have some thoughts to share.

I do not wish to dissuade anybody from enjoying turkey if they genuinely like it, but in my experience the ceiling is low. The best turkey I’ve ever had was fine. Being a turkey hater isn’t an interesting or novel opinion, but there is something missing from the discourse that is a credit to the turkey cause. Featuring turkey as the centerpiece of the Thanksgiving meal (historical precedent aside, also, I mean, come on) is mainly an exercise in demonstrating logistics and administrative efficiency; the achievement of a good culinary experience is secondary. This is a phenomenon mainly of the last few decades. With our busy go-go-go, buy-sell-buy lives and the constant distraction of our phones and the collapse of American democracy, having the forethought and presence of mind to buy your bird, thaw it out for like a week in the garage fridge, and then spend like 12 hours roasting and basting it is the genuine achievement. However, the return on investment as far as taste does not seem worth it and you could impress me just as much with a well ordered Google calendar.

I searched my mind for any lingering thoughts about turkey, and recalled that Benjamin Franklin pushed for it to be the national bird over the Bald Eagle, which is hilarious. It is also, apparently, not true according to The Franklin Institute, which totally sucks. This article from the Institute links to a different article titled “7 Things Ben Franklin Never Said”. I will not be clicking it so that I may avoid dispelling any other harmless myths.

Where and how should the term “Friendsgiving” be applied? In my experience, a Friendsgiving meal is a meal celebrated with friends around the holidays, right? Well I am hosting friends for dinner on Thanksgiving and whenever I describe my plans to someone they usually say “oh, how nice, a Friendsgiving!” This has started to give me pause - if the meal is on Thanksgiving, isn’t it just called Thanksgiving? I’ve started to bristle in a very petty way when people say this because it feels seasonally appropriate to get caught up in semantics.

I’ve thought of another credit to turkey - it is a funny looking bird. I am thinking of that image of the turkey on someone’s head from Friends and the dancing one in the music video for Peter Gabriel’s Sledgehammer. Come to think of it, that might be a chicken. They are funny looking in life, too. Not funny “ha ha” funny as in if you’ve ever seen a wild turkey in person you get the feeling that you’re not supposed to be around this guy.

I love making dishes that I can improve on each time I make them, and this time of year is when I continue to hone my apple pie. I use this Bon Apetit pie crust recipe from Alison Roman and Claire Saffitz’s apple pie recipe from that same publication, with some minor alterations. I have to say, when I started baking this pie a few years ago it was really good (on the merits of the recipes I’d say) and I have produced better results pretty much every time. Maybe I’ll get to a point of equilibrium where I can’t ascend any higher, or my further attempts to do so will begin the downward slope of a bell curve, but until then I’m going to keep striving for perfection.

I love this pie and the process of making it. The main point of differentiation in the process is that once you peel and slice your apples and mix them with the sugar, spices, and lemon juice, you let the apples sit for an hour or two in the refrigerator so that the juices seep out and mix with everything else, creating this highly concentrated nectar of the autumnal gods which feels TOO POWERFUL to keep sitting around. Towards the end of that blessed marination, you take some unfiltered apple cider and vanilla and reduce it down in a saucepan, which fills your kitchen with an aroma that convinces you that your life is indeed on the right track. Then, just when you think things couldn’t smell any better, you pour the apple runoff into the cider reduction and stagger about in olfactory bliss, groping for a whisk so that you can make sure nothing burns in the pan. Once that all reduces down to like half a cup, you mix in a slurry of corn starch and water so that this shit thickens into the most wonderful goo you’ve ever encountered and at this point I might stick a finger in and taste a little and shudder from tip to tail. Once its a bit cooled you slather the apples in the goo and then ready the pie for baking. What a rush.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t include some actual gratitude and giving of thanks in this post. I have much to be thankful for in my life, and I am certainly thankful for anyone taking the time to read this. This blog has been a fun project to work on intermittently this year, and as I had hoped, it has been the catalyst for connection with a number of people in ways big and small. I take none of that for granted. I hope you have a lovely Thanksgiving.