Thanksgiving

In a recent headline in the "Dining" section of the New York Times, the following question was posed: at Thanksgiving is it all about the turkey or the side dishes?

For me, hands down it has always been about the sides.   Never a fan of the tryptophan laden bird, I spend most of fall dreaming of the day in which gorging on cornbread dressing, broccoli casserole (made with Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup), and sweet potato casserole loaded with pecans and brown sugar is encouraged.   But the side dish I love the very most, the one that is made only at this special time of year, is pumpkin bread.

Whether served hot out of the oven with butter while the top is nice and crunchy; or the next day cold with a dollop of cream cheese...homemade pumpkin bread rocks! 

Especially the recipe for this tasty treat that has been knocking around my family for years now.  It's, by far, the absolute hands down best there is.   But enough of the hyperbole, here's the recipe for you to try, guaranteed to make this Thanksgiving a memorable one.

It started simply enough: the other half felt the need to bake. For me, well, I’m no baker and the urge to do so is akin to washing my car or preparing receipts for tax purposes. I’ll do it but only begrudgingly. But like many things I’m fully prepared to participate in the end result, and in this case it was a pie of monstrous proportions.

I’m not quite sure of his thought process as I wasn’t in the kitchen when he found the recipe, but I know it involved tons of pecans, a spring form pan and the new oven. I was a bit relieved that I wasn’t around as anyone knows to mess with a Texan’s Pecan Pie is clearly not the smartest thing to do (even if said Texan lives in California.)  It’s not quite sacrilege — but it’s pretty damn close.

"So this pie I’m baking, I found a recipe online and I’m not sure how it’s going to come out," my big red-headed angel tells me.

"You’re a baker, I’m sure it’ll be just fine," I respond.

"I don’t know about that, it’s kind of a different sort of Pecan Pie."

Different sort of pecan pie. Different sort of pecan pie. DIFFERENT SORT OF PECAN PIE. DIFFERENT SORT OF PECAN PIE! Are you getting that, folks? As those words floated around the kitchen they took their sweet little time worming their way into my brain. A what type of what pie? Did I really hear you correctly? Would you like to grab an enchilada while you’re at it and poke me in the eye? How about hitting me over the head with a rib bone from Tyler, Texas? Come on, I’m all yours, just do it! You already started.

“It feels like we are in a movie,” said Alessandro across the living room as he stabbed his fork into a giant piece of turkey. “We see this in the movies, but we never experience it. This is my first Thanksgiving.”

Alessandro is an Italian man that one of our classmates, in Italy, took time to make friends with over the last three weeks. He is sitting across the room from me. To my left, a woman from Israel is laughing. Next to her is an Englishman, and another Italian. Just past a light shade, that obstructs my view, is a German. If you take another look around our room, you might not only notice the foreign differences but also the age differences as well. A retired woman, born in America, who grew up in Canada, is sitting three spaces to my left while others in the room have just nearly hit 23. You might think we are sitting in a support group for diversity, but this is far from what is happening. This is our Thanksgiving—ten Americans, and five, eventually six people who have never celebrated the giant turkey in the middle of the table, the green bean casserole, or cranberry sauce (which go for 3.90 Euro each at the International Ingredient store) before.

It is 3:30PM November 26, 2009. I take a deep breath as I swallow a spoonful of green bean casserole—probably from my third round of food. I look at the table to see what is left for another helping. My eyes get big as I notice that the vegetarian stuffing hasn’t been touched and that there are a few shrimps left at the end of the table. “Yes!—I think.” Shortly after, I go into a food coma, throw on my sweatpants, and curl into a ball for an afternoon nap. Not before long, I awake and pounce on apple pie for dessert. This is Thanksgiving…this is a true American Thanksgiving. This year I won’t be having one of those. This year I will be saying “Grazie” rather than “Thank you” and I will be stuffing my body with endless baskets of bread, bowls of pasta, and bites of pizza. This year I will spend Thanksgiving in Florence, Italy.

It was just two years ago that I spent Thanksgiving in Rome, Italy. At the time, the class that I had studied abroad with was fortunate enough to have our group leaders organize a Thanksgiving dinner at one of the most prestigious hotel rooftops in all of Italy, The Marriott on Via Veneto. As a few of my roommates, my brother, and I approached the beautiful hotel, we began to ponder what we would be filling our plates with that night. Of course I cried out, “There better be green bean casserole.”