What’s the right way to do Thanksgiving?

What’s the right way to do Thanksgiving? We’ve been trying to figure that out over here at RoosRoast. Maybe you sleep in on Thanksgiving, caffeinate to summon the energy to watch a parade on tv, and then use the break between parades and football to talk to your family about preparing the meal (which will inevitably be served three hours later than planned, even if half of it was prepared by the grocery store ahead of time). Or maybe you’re like the family I met bike riding through Loch Alpine two Thanksgivings ago - even though it was barely pushing noon, the whole family was out in the chilly air on a post-Thanksgiving meal walk. The only consensus is that there are a lot of different approaches people take to gathering together to stuff, cook, and eat a bird. But there are some shared lessons to be learned along the way.

Last year I enjoyed a planner’s paradise Thanksgiving in Oak Park, a leafy Chicago suburb. I’m sure this is how much of America does Turkey Day, while for me it was an awakening. Imagine a Thanksgiving where every waking second is a line item on an extensive schedule for the preparation of the gathering meal. I was pumped for this level of food-related detail; I was scared by the fact that some of it was written in a spreadsheet, and involved a small army of participants. Like literally a lot of cooks in the kitchen. I love to feed people, but I generally do my cooking alone.

In the run up to Turkey Day, someone made a shared iphone Note where recipes from across the internet got pasted and vetted and accepted or rejected. There was enthusiastic conversation on the group text about the cheese board (how many are too many funky moldy cheeses?), kale v. caesar salad (kale won), if having green bean casserole and garlic-ginger green beans was redundant (yes), if anyone really loved brussels sprouts (no), or if we should make or buy dessert (split decision - made a salted maple pie (shout out to Sister Pie in Detroit!), bought the pumpkin). There was a guest list, and a playlist, and later shopping and prep lists. 

For my part, I made guarantees of an unlimited flow of coffee and a perfectly roasted bird stuffed with equally spectacular dressing. (Here we have the first lesson of this story: on Thanksgiving, you should never over promise and under deliver, at least if you hope to be invited back the next year.) 

On the day there was seamless collaboration, sharing and communication. This home had a Breville espresso machine and I had that thing cranking out shots and long pulls of every RoosRoast variety. Some of us prepped and cooked; some gave orders, while others followed them. Someone was in charge of ambience, while someone else took on the role of all-day dishwasher. Teens showed their faces from the basement to snack between making tiktok dances and watching movies. (Here we have our second lesson: Thanksgiving is overstimulation central; to survive, you have to pick a lane and stick to it.) 

Everything was right on schedule until I decided that the only correct way to wait out the remaining time before we could eat that perfectly cooked turkey was to go on a bike ride. Our trustworthy dishwasher offered to take the turkey out of the oven at the designated time, agreeing to set a timer to take on this job without even pausing his guitar strumming on the couch.

Now this brings us to the third, hardest lesson learned of this tale. It proceeds naturally by adding the first two together: as much as Thanksgiving is a collaborative endeavor, different people care about different things. Rare is the person who makes sure that every dish takes up equal real estate on their plate; you’re a sides person, or a turkey guy, or maybe every bite of the meal is just a step closer to the main event - dessert. That applies to prepping and cooking the meal as much as eating. If you care about setting the perfect mood for the Thanksgiving meal, you don’t let your middle school son curate the dinner time playlist. And if you’re the guy who built a whole day around the promise of a top tier turkey, you’re a fool to trade control over cooking time for a 45 minute ride through the suburbs (however perfect the weather and delightful your company).

Dear RoosRoast E-post subscriber, traveler, and future Thanksgiving participant, please be a better holiday gatherer than I was and follow through on your commitments to the gathering commitments. Have that extra cup of RoosRoast to keep you focused and on task in the homestretch of your eight hour cooking slog. BE the person who pulls the turkey from the oven when the timer goes off, not the person on the Dry Turkey Ride.