Thanksgiving

Choosing a wine for the Thanksgiving table does not have to be as difficult as many make it seem. With the variety of competing flavors of Thanksgiving, it may seem difficult to find the perfect pairing. Finding a wine that goes with everything is key. And there are plenty of wines available in the market that accomplish the task. But you definitely don't want an overpowering wine or a lightweight wine that doesn't stand up to the many different dishes. Look for a fruity medium-bodied wine with good tartness or crispness. It has to cut through the rich autumnal flavors as well as complement the roast turkey. Pinot Noir and Chardonnay are among the best wines for Thanksgiving, but a few other, more unique choices are available too. The following wines are all fruit-forward, food-friendly, and suitable for a whole range of tastes. Surprise your guests with one or more of these picks.

Beaujolais Nouveau is one of the most popular wines this time of year. Every third Thursday in November France releases it into the world with much lauded fanfare and drop ships it to locations worldwide. After the grapes are harvested, the juice is only fermented for a few weeks before becoming wine. The wine from négociant Georges Duboeuf is the easiest to find in wine stores across the country, but many other brands can also be procured. Beaujolais is made from the Gamay grape in the Burgundy subregion of the same name. The resulting wine is very fruity with a light to medium body with nice tartness but low tannins. It's the perfect red wine to go with poultry, especially turkey or chicken. This wine is possibly one of the only reds that can benefit from slight chilling, but try it at different temperatures to see which is more appealing. Drink it while it's young, the wine is not meant for aging.

“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.

You probably snuck down into the kitchen at midnight after Thanksgiving dinner and made yourself a sandwich – come one, you know you did. White bread, mayo, cranberries, turkey, lettuce, toasted or untoasted, you couldn’t help yourself. And the next day the stuffing was awfully tasty, too.

But now it’s day three and there’s still a lot of meat on the turkey carcass – not because it wasn’t good – but because you couldn’t resist making five sides and someone insisted on mashed potatoes as well as sweet and Brussels sprouts, even though you’d already planned (and were not willing to give up) your mother’s green beans with toasted almonds, not to mention three pies and that chocolate cake that someone slipped onto the dessert display (or rather slipped into the oven) and then onto the cake plate because it wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without a cake, too!!

So, what do you do with the leftover turkey meat. I know the answer, partly because I live in L.A. and it’s the answer to everything leftover (practically.) But also because it’s a complete change of pace and won’t feel like leftovers.

Make turkey tacos and a couple of simple Mexican sides!!

Every family has their traditions. The things that make the holidays particularly memorable to them. When it comes to Thanksgiving those traditions almost always revolve around food. What graces the table is just as important as who sits around it. While some people may choose to experiment from year to year some things just aren't allowed to change. Usually it's a side dish. Sometime it's not very healthy or even classy, but it must be made.

In the case of my family it's Jell-O Salad. It has graced our holiday table for as long as I can remember. I have tried to trace the origin as it is distinctly American and probably a recipe that came from the company itself. It certainly is not something my very Polish grandmother would have created on her own. She was an expert baker and this is just too pedestrian for her talents. The closest version I came to finding online had it published in 2000. That's about 30 years too late. That version also included walnuts, which just sounds gross. They would totally mess up the the smooth, melt-in-your-mouth texture of the dish.

I can only imagine she started making it to placate the unrefined palates of her four young grandchildren. I mean, who would ever pass up Strawberry Jell-O with bananas. It seemed more like a dessert than a side dish and added a little sweetness and color to our plates. Even when we were older we had her continue to make it, because it just wasn't the holidays without it.