Thinking About Thanksgiving

Every so often, life converges in a way that makes me wonder how I’m going to get through. Work is overwhelming right now, Thanksgiving is coming, my in-laws are arriving, SugarPie is busy being two and a half, Honey feels like he’s getting short-shrift… and I’m pregnant. That last bit isn’t readily apparent to the public just yet, but it’s sapping every bit of energy that I have, with accompanying waves of nausea. I of course have been through this before, but I frankly forgot just how exhausting early pregnancy is. I think that’s by design: had I remembered, I probably would have thrown in the towel after the first time.

Anyway, Real Simple did in fact publish Thanksgiving recipes. They have a whole menu here. Truth be told, I just don’t find them very compelling.

So I picked up the latest issue of Gourmet at the supermarket, largely in an act of sentimentality. I haven’t really read Gourmet for several years: I generally prefer Bon Appetit as these things go, and I find that Gourmet’s recipes just don’t really fit my life at the moment, but I nonetheless was devastated to hear that Condé Nast plans to stop publishing it. It’s Gourmet, people! It’s important to me that it exist, whether or not I routinely cook from it. But no one asked me. And… reading through their gorgeous Thanksgiving spread, I realized that I was totally uninspired to make any of it.

I have come to the conclusion that Thanksgiving, to me, is about very specific recipes, for which there is simply no substitute. I do not claim that my recipes are the best, or even necessarily particularly good, but for me this is far more about nostalgia than it is about the actual recipe. My recipes came from family and dear friends, many of whom are no longer with us, and if my great aunt believed that Libby’s pumpkin was the basis for the perfect Thanksgiving tart, who am I to question that?

So I made my list based on a Thanksgiving slate with a distinctly nostalgic sensibility, and SugarPie and I braved Publix first thing in the morning, before the crowds descended, and before I spent yet another weekend day at the office. My menu for the rest of the week is going to be old reliable standards that I can make in my sleep, since I just might have to.