In spite of my serious tardiness here, I still wanted to write a little something about Turkey Day…

Ironically, we don’t do Turkey.  Tradition is overrated in our humble opinion, and we’ve only folded once in 10 years and attempted a turkey and the typical sides for our Thanksgiving meal.  (It was not good, by the way, and I remember craving pizza afterwards.)  We’ve traded in the age old goodies for an Italian feast complete with burrata, bruschetta, spaghetti done two ways—spicy red and truffle white sauce—topped with meatballs.  But we can’t shame Thanksgiving foods entirely, so we’ve kept our favorite golden oldies–Uncle Albert’s stuffing, cranberry salad, pecan pie, and peanut butter pie.

This has been our “tradition” for the last decade, but it’s interesting to note that my first sans Turkey festivity occurred many moons ago (1997?) when I first visited my best friend Denise in California for the holiday.  I’m still shocked that my parents allowed me skip our family gathering and fly across the country, but I’m certainly thankful that they relaxed the rules a tad.  I spent an incredible Thanksgiving with Denise and her family that year and was ecstatic to break out of the turkey and mashed potato mold in lieu of fettuccine alfredo and garlic bread; instead of pumpkin pie, Denise’s sister Heather made these ridiculous monster cookies.  I remember the jaunt to the grocery store equipped with our reindeer antler headbands and it was then that I realized it wasn’t going to be a traditional Thanksgiving–I readily welcomed the change.  I’ve always felt at home with Denise and her family and this particular Thanksgiving really solidified this for me—(and after being with her family again this past summer for her wedding, I’m happy to say I still feel the same as I did back then….”good bread,” as the Italian’s would say.) Thanksgiving with Denise is one of my favorite memories, and while the tradition to do Italian foods now is more a result of marrying an Italian than this particular meal in California, I love that our current tradition is something that I experienced first with a dear friend many years ago.

This year, my sister and her family drove down from Illinois to spend the holiday with us; we started cooking as soon as we woke up, starting eating around noon and the food a coma settled in around 3:00.  We essentially ate in courses, starting with bruschetta and burrata, complete with truffle seasoned Mascarpone cheese, basil pesto, roasted garlic, heirloom tomatoes and balsamic glaze.  We moved on to a strawberry vinaigrette salad as an attempt to have some greens and then chatted for about an hour before we served up the main course of red and white sauced spaghetti meatballs.  We postponed the pecan and peanut butter pie as dinner entrees…

It was a fabulous feast and I loved spending this time with some of my family; my nieces and nephews are a big piece of my heart and I loved spoiling them rotten with drawers of hidden candy, Pepsi before bedtime, and hours of Monopoly.  My sister and I had a couple of late night talks we were overdue on, and it felt good to have her and her hubby in our new place.  The time was fast and furious, but I loved every minute of it, and since my nephew declared it should be an every-other-year tradition, I think we’ll take them up on it.