As someone who loves to dream up new dishes to dazzle - or at least find new spins on old favorites - it's darn near impossible for me to embrace tradition when it comes to a holiday meal.
I'm all about keeping the rest of our rituals sacred, but the menu? Not so much.
What if we try an Indian-spiced turkey with curry mashed potatoes this year, I ask? Questions that are immediately met with a resounding, "No!" Or a slightly more polite, "Umm, no."
I won't let them break my spirit, I say, as I proudly place my chestnut-and-fig-studded dressing on the table. And everyone reaches for the pan of plain ol'.
But this year will be different. Not for them; for me.
Call it me getting older, or just finally learning how to take the hint, but I'm ready to embrace my inner sweet potato casserole. Goopy marshmallows and all. Interestingly enough, the impetus for this year's change was Bon Appetit, a magazine whose very bread and butter (artisanal, of course) is built on fancy-pants recipes and elegant eats.
I was flipping through a stack of old issues the other day, when I came across a 2013 article waxing poetic about the joys of eating EXACTLY the same holiday dishes every year.
In the piece, writers Jenny Rosenstrach and Andy Ward reminisce that months after the holidays pass, their children and grandchildren can't remember what gifts they received. But they can recite what they ate without missing a beat, right down to the chopped pecans in the roasted carrots.
"We love the holidays, but there is so much chaos embedded in them, so much scrambling around," they said, "that there's something comforting about sitting down at the end of it all with your family and eating the thing you've been eating since Emilio Estevez was a movie star."
And then came the clincher, at least for me.
"As people who care a lot about food, it does cross our minds that maybe we should mix it up once in a while and push for change - add some pomegranate molasses to the dressing ... or attempt a homemade Buche de Noel. But then we remember: 'Mixing it up' is what we spend the rest of the year doing. Tradition - not breaking it - is what makes this meal special."
Well said. I'm in.
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I enjoyed reading Dawn Nolan's roundup in Sunday's Life section about local bakeries where you can snag a delicious good-as-home-baked pie for Thanksgiving dinner, and how those bakers have been bracing for the onslaught of orders to come. (Sarah's Bakery in South Hills sold 450 pies in just the three days leading up to turkey day last year. That's a lot of dough!)
But it's no surprise demand is so high, given the fact that nearly all Americans, a whopping 90 percent, say they will eat pie this Thanksgiving, with 61 percent indulging in at least two different kinds. That's according to the folks at independent market research firm Wakefield, which was commissioned by Sara Lee to survey the nation's pie-eating habits.
Other eye-raising stats ...
Nearly 1 in 3 Americans (and more than half of all millennials) have passed off a store-bought dessert as homemade on Thanksgiving.
Half of those polled said they have no idea how to fix a broken crust. (Seriously? Just pinch it together or cover it with more dough - or a dollop of whipped cream.)
More than 1 in 3 (35 percent) have eaten pie before their Thanksgiving main course.
In not-so-surprising news ...
Pumpkin is America's favorite Thanksgiving pie flavor, beating pecan, apple, sweet potato, cherry and blueberry.
Forty-nine percent of those with significant others would rather call a confidential baking hotline than ask their mother-in-law for help with a cooking crisis.
They clearly don't have my mother-in-law, who would put those baking "experts" to shame in the kitchen. (Yes, that's me trying to sweet-talk my way to an extra slice of whatever tasty treat she brings to our house that day. I'll let you know if it works!)
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So back to those traditions I just spoke of ...
My desk is littered with recipes I've been ripping from magazines for months, looking for inspiration for this year's meal. Moroccan-spiced turkey with aromatic orange pan jus, spiced cranberry-mango chutney, leek and pancetta potato rosti, a port-glazed pear tart with rosemary-cornmeal crust.
I'll still make them all, don't you worry, it'll just be on a random Tuesday night and not for the Thanksgiving table. That day, I'll be abandoning the bourbon-spiked or chocolate-crusted pecan pies of recent years in favor of the no-frills recipe I found on the back of a postcard (a postcard, people) years and years ago.
It's nothing but eggs, sugar, dark corn syrup, butter and pecans in a store-bought shell. And it's simply awesome.
Steven Keith writes a weekly food column for the Charleston Gazette-Mail. He can be reached at 304-380-6096 or by email at dailymailfoodguy@aol.com. You can also follow him on Facebook and Pinterest as "DailyMail FoodGuy," on Twitter as "DMFoodGuy" and read his blog at blogs.charlestondailymail/foodguy.
No-Frills Southern Pecan Pie
3 eggs
2/3 cup sugar
1 cup dark corn syrup
1/3 cup melted butter
1 cup pecan halves (or more for a denser, less-goopy filling)
1 9-inch unbaked pastry shell
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Beat eggs thoroughly with sugar, dash of salt, corn syrup and butter.
Stir in pecans and pour into pie crust. Bake 50 minutes, or until knife inserted halfway between center and outside of filling comes out clean. Cool before serving. Note: Mixture fills two shallow pie crusts or one deep-dish crust.