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Favorite traditions: Mock Thanksgiving
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This picture is of my friend Sarah's family house in the Poconos, not of Thanksgiving. But it's so fallish, isn't it?
When I first started cooking, I very badly wanted to start a tradition of hosting a Mock Thanksgiving for my friends, so we could all experience the ecstatic joy of a holiday with just our friends, like the characters on sitcoms have (because on the Thanksgiving specials, nobody seems to go home?).
So I did. The first year, which was also the year I learned to cook, we decided that Mock Thanksgiving would be the Saturday before the actual day. I made a full-on, traditional Thanksgiving dinner for my then boyfriend (now husband), Cooper, his roommates, Sam and Bryan, and some additional friends. The six of us ate together all the time, so it was a pretty safe crowd.
Good thing, too, as Sam and I dipped into the Beaujolais Nouveau a teensy bit early, so by the time I actually sat down to dinner I was, well, less than hungry. That year I also somehow crammed the turkey into the oven in such a way that the top of the bird hit the heating element. Fortunately for my ego, everyone pretended it was normal to eat a turkey with big black heating element-shaped tatoo.
The following year was a little better. I had about one less glass of wine, and I moved the racks in the oven to give the turkey a little breathing room. The only misstep that year involved homemade cranberry sauce that pretty much definied the word "tart." Fortunately, I had some backup in a can.
After that year, things languished a little as everybody got married and moved away and had kids and generally grew up. But last year, a different group of friends all gathered at our house to reinstate the tradition. Our house was completely under construction - we just barely had a kitchen - and we lugged our dining room table (plus another smaller table) into our living room so everybody could actually sit down. We cooked a turkey and I made some very fancy Brussels sprouts that pretty much nobody ate. (They never do eat my big experiments - but the Brussels sprouts really were good!) Everyone brought a favorite family Thanksgiving dish (we had a lot of sweet potatoes). It was very relaxed and fun and we laughed a lot and when it was over I didn't even mind that I'd be eating turkey again less than a week later.
I am, selfishly, a huge fan of Mock Thanksgiving because cooking a big, elaborate, ritual-filled dinner is so totally gratifying. But I like to think that it's also fun for the guests, who get a chance to give thanks in a situation that completely lacks the underlying tension of a family dinner. Everyone loves family dinners - I certainly do - but they're not always relaxing.
And giving more thanks is never a bad thing, right?
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