I can't wait - my favorite holiday is right around the corner. That’s right – Thanksgiving is upon us and if you’re anything like me (all but this year) – you’ve probably been keeping a mental list of dishes to cook since July. Oh yes, I get excited for Thanksgiving pretty early on – I clip those recipes early and create an abominable pile through which I sift the first of October and which I eventually wittle down to about 12 dishes in total. You see, every year, but this year, for reasons I’ll explain shortly, I’ve cooked a monster feast for friends because for one reason or another I couldn’t go home for the holiday and at one point decided that the holiday won’t be taken away from me.

It all started out innocently enough with a couple of college friends and me stranded in Pittsburg for Thanksgiving one year – I had so many projects, I needed to stay on campus to work through them – my friends found themselves in a similar predicament. So we up and cooked a bunch of dishes and had our own perfect meal, accompanied by some excellent micro-brewed beer. This created a tradition.

When I moved to New York, I was a junior member of a team in an investment bank, so taking the Friday after the Thanksgiving Thursday was out of the question. And so the dinner tradition continued first starting with three people. The following year, it was eight. The year after seventeen. Last year it was thirty-one. A few friends of mine and I made dinner for thirty-one people! And it was amazing and great and delicious and warm.

This year, I simply couldn’t get around to it. Every weekend in November, including this one (we have a bat mitzvah service and party today to attend early this morning) is filled with festivities. My work has taken a very front seat and I’m exhausted when I come home. With two weeks a year for vacation, that doesn’t a restful girl make. So I am opting out of hosting a feast. Will KS and I sit down to a quiet festive meal of our own for two? Quite possibly. But no large feasts for me.

However, I’d like to share with you some of my all time favorite holiday recipes here if you are looking for something new to bring to your Thanksgiving table. Maybe you have a few traditional dishes you’d like to keep, but introduce a few new ones to the table. I hope you find these helpful and if you try them, let me know how you like them. Happy planning!

Spiced Glazed Carrots
How to find The One (turkey, that is)
Apple Celery Salad & Cranberry Sauce (2 recipes!)
Porcini Mushroom Soup (my favorite soup in the whole, wide world - a family tradition)
My thoughts on roasting a turkey.
Apple Pie (sorry, I cheat with a pre-made crust!)
Acorn Squash - roasted
And my personal, favorite dish now: Pumpkin Bread Pudding Souffle - a dish that renders me speechless and elated, and the first dish to get devoured at the Thanksgiving table every year!

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