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Right on time for all upcoming feasts, it’s “Holiday Recipes Dictated by Kindergarteners,” in the newsletter Bright Spots, by Chris Duffy. (His friend, a kindergarten teacher, had her students “collectively dictate to her how they believe their favorite Thanksgiving dishes were made.”) For instance, turkey:
Click through for further instructions on how to prepare stuffing, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie. Where was this two weeks ago?
As I write this, it’s snowing outside here in Vermont and Covid-19 has finally gained a foothold in our little state. At the governor’s press conference yesterday, he and his pandemic response team announced that contact tracing done by the state showed that the rise in cases started as an outbreak in some hockey leagues. That initial outbreak wasn’t contained and subsequent non-essential, indoor, mask-less, multi-household gatherings and Halloween parties resulted in the very sharp rise we started to see here in the first week of November.
Scott explained that 71% of outbreaks reported from Oct. 1 to Nov. 13 were linked to “social events, parties and people hanging out at home or bars and clubs.” He added Vermont has not seen the virus spread widely at schools, restaurants or other businesses.
Dr. Mark Levine, the state health commissioner, said those parties came in a variety of sizes of parties โ Halloween gatherings large and small, dinner parties, baby showers, “people in the high single numbers at a deer camp.”
In states with many infections, particularly in the Midwest, contact tracing is all but impossible, so it’s instructive to pay attention to Vermont’s example here: we’re doing the tracing and the tracers say the infections are coming from people gathering indoors across multiple households. Which is exactly what public health and medical experts have been urging people not to do for months now.
And that brings us to Thanksgiving. For The Atlantic, Rachel Gutman asked her colleagues who have been writing extensively about the pandemic for some of their top safety rules and guidelines and their number one was, say it with me:
My colleagues’ guidance boils down to this winter’s golden rule for interacting with anyone outside your immediate household: Don’t spend time indoors with other people.
Here it is again in a fun font, just to make sure you got it: ๐๐ธ๐ท’๐ฝ ๐ผ๐น๐ฎ๐ท๐ญ ๐ฝ๐ฒ๐ถ๐ฎ ๐ฒ๐ท๐ญ๐ธ๐ธ๐ป๐ผ ๐๐ฒ๐ฝ๐ฑ ๐ธ๐ฝ๐ฑ๐ฎ๐ป ๐น๐ฎ๐ธ๐น๐ต๐ฎ.
Look, for some people spending time indoors with others is essential โ jobs, education, etc. โ but those who don’t have to, shouldn’t. And this goes for everywhere in the US because no states (aside from maybe Hawaii) are doing well right now โ cases are either high, rising sharply, or both. Please please don’t gather in indoor, multi-household groups for Thanksgiving if you haven’t quarantined beforehand. In the US right now, about 1-in-55 people who get Covid-19 die from it. With rates already high around the country, if many people do Thanksgiving as usual, an already horrific and deadly situation could become much much worse.
Boston College historian Heather Cox Richardson has been writing a near-daily political dispatch called Letters from an American for the past several weeks (her archives go further back on Facebook), mostly about the impeachment proceedings and their historical context.
In today’s letter, Richardson reminds us why Americans celebrate Thanksgiving.
Everyone generally knows that the Pilgrims and the Wampanoags shared a feast in fall 1621, and that early colonial leaders periodically declared days of thanksgiving when settlers were supposed to give their thanks for continued life and โ with luck โ prosperity.
But this is not why we celebrate Thanksgiving.
We celebrate thanks to President Abraham Lincoln and his defense of American democracy during the Civil War.
Northerners elected Lincoln to the presidency in 1860 to stop rich southern slaveholders from taking over the government and using it to cement their own wealth and power. When voters elected Lincoln, those same southern leaders pulled their states out of the Union and set out to create their own nation, the Confederate States of America, based in slavery and codifying the idea that some men were better than others and that this small elite group should rule the country. Under Lincoln, the United States government set out to end this slaveholders’ rebellion and bring the South back into a Union in which the government worked for people at the bottom, not just those at the top.
File this under “I Love NYC”. On Sunday night, riders on a Brooklyn-bound L train were treated to a full Thanksgiving dinner, courtesy of some of their fellow straphangers. For more than 20 minutes, a group of riders dined and passed out plates of turkey, collards, stuffing, squash, and mashed potatoes to other folks in the car. Here’s a 21-minute chunk of the action:
They started the meal with a prayer and everything. An onlooker said of the event:
It was a 7 PM Sunday L from union square and was not crowded at all. They said it was an inclusive gesture to emphasize no one should go without food on Thanksgiving. They were loud but not rowdy or a nuisance. They even handed out plates to everyone in the car โ I got one and the turkey was a solid 7/10 and collard 8.5/10. I’m glad I got to experience something like this. Makes a great story!
There were even MTA employees amongst us but no one objected.
Here’s a shorter video with some of the highlights:
(thx, johana)
If you’ve ever wanted to see a video about how to cook a pot-infused Thanksgiving turkey shot in the style of a Requiem for a Dream heroin-shooting sequence, you have come to the right place. (via devour)
From the NY Times, an epic listing of recipes for traditional (and not so traditional) Thanksgiving food from each of the 50 US states. Featuring lefse from North Dakota, salty pluff mud pie from South Carolina, turkey tamales from Texas, and cheddar mashed potatoes from Vermont. (via @jimray)
This year, the first day of Hanukkah coincides with Thanksgiving Day. Amazingly, this is the first second time it’s happened since President Lincoln established Thanksgiving in 1863 and it is also the last time it’ll happen until the year 79,811. I’ll say that again: after this year, Hanukkah and Thanksgiving Day won’t overlap for another 77,798 years.
The reason is because the Jewish calendar is very slowly getting out of sync with the solar calendar, at a rate of 4 days per 1000 years (not bad for a many centuries old calendar!) This means that while presently Hanukkah can be as early as 11/28, over the years the calendar will drift forward, such that the earliest Hanukkah can be is 11/29. The last time Hanukkah falls on 11/28 is 2146 (which happens to be a Monday).
(via @hchamp)
Update: As noted above, Thanksgiving and Hanukkah overlapped once before, in 1888, because Thanksgiving used to fall on the last Thursday in November and not the fourth Thursday.
J. Kenji Lรณpez-Alt does a long Thanksgiving Q&A on Serious Eats answering all those questions you’ll be babbling in your kitchen around 2 pm this Thursday.
He addresses classic conundrums:
If turkey is roasted well in advance of guests arriving, or there is a delay, what’s the best way to re-heat? To what temperature?
If tented with foil and left in a warm place, a turkey should stay warm for at least a couple hoursโat least internally. The real danger is the skin getting soggy and the surfaces getting cold. The best way to fix this? Just pop it in a 550ยฐF oven for 7 to 15 minutes until the skin is crisp and piping hot again. The rest should take care of itself.
As well as more contemporary considerations:
I have a vegan cousin coming to visit this year. Could you suggest any vegan dishes that I could serve that the rest of the family would be able to enjoy as well?
I really love my Vegan Chili made with real dried chilies and chickpeas, and I’d serve a vegan marinated kale salad with sumac onions to anyone, regardless of the carnivorosity.
For a more “holiday”-like approach, how about a stuffed delicata squash? You can totally leave off the parmesan from the breadcrumbs and still make out with a fantastic main course.
Check out all of Kenji’s answers to 50 different Thanksgiving questions over on Serious Eats.
Also on Serious Eats: the ultimate turducken. I made a turducken for Thanksgiving 3 years ago and, considering how much I manhandled it, it came out more delicious than it had any right to be. Duck fat covers a multitude of sins.
For tomorrow, a turkey stuffing recipe that uses White Castle hamburgers. I’d really like to try this some year, but there’s no way my wife would go for it. Come on, it’s from scratch! (Well, except for the burgers…)
This week’s New Yorker features 4 different Thanksgiving-themed covered by Chris Ware. Collect them all! This one’s my favorite.
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