Take a few minutes this Thanksgiving to consider the role that food plays in drawing our families – and a divided nation – together.
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Everyone wants to wax philosophically about Thanksgiving.
This is the day to count your blessings, we say. Put aside your differences. Stop talking about the election for a day. Or, heck, even 30 minutes.
But what about the food?
Why don’t we ever talk about the other star of his holiday?
It probably sounds frivolous. Or boring. Everyone turns into a glutton. Then we regret it on the couch.
The end.
But that shortchanges the magical power of food. And the stories behind those hours spent in the kitchen. Or the traditions that help explain why we serve the dishes we do.
Our opinions team shares a few of ours in hopes that it inspires you to think deeper on the role food plays in drawing our families — and even a divided nation like ours — together.
If nothing else, maybe it’ll give you some new recipe ideas to try next year.
The sound that reminds me of my dad
Growing up, my dad always had to have a can of cranberry sauce for the holiday — the plain, jellied one. It was simple, like him. No fancy berries or orange zest.
And he loved it. I did, too. But the rest of the family hated it.
After I moved to Arizona and began cooking my own holiday meals, I bought a can of cranberry sauce to honor my dad, who had passed away a year before.
Opening it the first year, my now-husband (who doesn’t like cranberry sauce) and I discovered that it made a hilarious SCHLORRRP sound as it came out of the can. One giant, gelatinous red cylinder that maintains its wiggly shape even after it leaves the can.
We laughed and laughed. And then next year, videoed the cranberry sauce making that noise again.
So, that’s our tradition. We video the cranberry sauce coming out of the can in one giant blob. We laugh and laugh.
And I remember my dad.
— Joanna Allhands
Let me change your view of cranberries
Joanna, that’s a great tradition.
When I was a kid, my mom made cranberry relish. Now, many readers will know what I’m talking about, but I’m always surprised at how many people have never had it.
If you’re so deprived, I’m about to change your conception of cranberries, cranberry sauce and Thanksgiving.
My mom doesn’t know where she got the recipe, but I’m guessing Family Circle, her magazine of choice in the 1960s. It couldn’t be simpler:
CRANBERRY RELISH
Get a 12-ounce bag of cranberries, two oranges (peel and all) and one cup of sugar. (My mom still makes this with 2 cups of sugar.)Rinse the cranberries and oranges. Slice the oranges and then run oranges and cranberries through a meat grinder and into a bowl.Mix in the sugar, stir and cover.Refrigerate.
Serve in a small bowl with a spoon. Put a couple dabs on your plate next to the turkey or dressing. It especially brings out the flavor in white meat.
Make this and start your countdown. You’re about to take off to turkey heaven.
— Phil Boas
No table is complete without gnocchi
As a child, our Thanksgiving Day table overflowed with tradition. Turkey. Mashed potatoes. Stuffing. Gravy. Green bean casserole. Fresh-made dinner rolls. And … gnocchi.
“There’s got to be a little Italian,” my mother would say. “Like us.”
I’d get to squeeze the boiled potatoes through the hand-held ricer onto a large cutting board. The potatoes would be formed into a bowl into which my mother would drop a single egg. Flour would be added and the mixture would be gently molded into a dough.
After it rested, I’d get to roll a portion into a “snake” then cut it into tiny “pillows.”
Sometimes, my mother would hum and sing a little refrain she said her mother used to sing with her: “Ridi, ridi che la mamma ha fatto i gnocchi.”
“Laugh, laugh, because momma made gnocchi.”
And that’s what we’d do. Laugh and laugh.
Remembering it, I still do.
— EJ Montini
Stuffing is the real star of the show
Let’s talk turkey about the star of the show: the stuffing, of course.
This is the place where I’m supposed to wax on about Mom’s old recipe, but honestly, my mother wasn’t what you’d call a great cook. More than once she used the smoke alarm as a kitchen timer.
In our house, it’s stuffing, Southwestern style — a recipe my husband has cobbled together over the years from trial and error. A great deal of error early on.
Corn bread made from scratch a day ahead, then mashed up and mixed with fresh Anaheim, poblano and jalapeno chilies. Add in some corn, green onions, fresh cilantro and the usual butter, eggs, sugar and spices, and make sure to double the recipe.
Leftovers are a must.
We don’t stuff our stuffing inside the turkey because, well, that’s just gross. Instead, the bird is filled with orange slices and the stuffing goes into casserole dishes.
And yes, I know that technically makes it dressing, not stuffing.
Whatever you want to call it, I call it the best thing on the table.
Until the pie is served …
— Laurie Roberts
My family cooked. I buy pies from the store
Thanksgiving dinner traditions? Are you kidding me? We did them all.
Turkey. Cornbread stuffing. Regular stuffing. Macaroni and cheese (and trust me when I tell you that Patti LaBelle’s recipe didn’t have a thing on what my mother and grandmothers could do off the top of their heads.) Cranberry sauce (out of the can, Joanna.) Cranberry relish (like Phil remembers.)
Mashed potatoes. Green beans (my sisters and cousins would spend all morning snapping the ends off.) Green bean casserole. Collard greens (and with respect to Kamala Harris, they were never washed in a bathtub. Gross.) Mustard greens. Kale. Candied yams. Homemade rolls. And there always was enough gravy for everyone to have their own boat with a straw in it.
Don’t get me started on the desserts. Pecan pie. (My grandmother would make one for the family, and another for me.) Pound cake. 7Up cake. Pineapple upside-down cake. Zucchini bread. Sweet potato pie. (There was never pumpkin pie. That was for, um, other families.) And there was enough Cool Whip that we could save the containers and never need to buy Tupperware.
That feels like yesterday and like a million years ago.
These days, I’m out here in Phoenix as a single dad with no family except my four kids. My goal is to make the best replica of the meals I remember and tell my little crew stories about family members they’ll only meet once or twice a year, if we’re lucky.
This will be my third year making Thanksgiving dinner, texting my sisters for recipes and Facetiming my mom for help with some of the details. I’ve done a pretty good job, so far.
But there’s one tradition that I think my kids are going to remember above all: Dad buys the pies from the grocery store.
— Greg Moore
I eat whatever the rest of my family brings
I’m the pilgrim in the Thanksgiving culinary world, sifting through what others prepare.
This has nothing to do with the fact that Thanksgiving wasn’t part of my childhood.
It’s just that I’ve earned a medal as the family’s worst cook. In my last attempt, we ended with inedible turkey, laughing as we savored the side dishes others had made.
Hanging out, laughing and sharing whatever is on the table is my family’s tradition. It isn’t about a particular recipe. It’s enjoying each other’s company and, in my case, letting others take over the kitchen.
What a blessing that is!
— Elvia Díaz
What are your favorite Thanksgiving food traditions? Tell us.