Thanksgiving for two

Making the most of the world right now.

Being in Arizona, the idea of hosting Thanksgiving on the patio was certainly an option. However, even with all the social distancing and mask wearing, it simply didn’t feel right (for us) to go to my parent’s house this year for their Thanksgiving al fresco (on the patio, lol). We usually split up the holiday hosting duties, with my parents hosting Thanksgiving, my sister hosts Christmas Eve and I get the Christmas dinner hosting crown, I mean duties.

Don’t get me wrong, I was a little sad about not getting together as a family (with my sister’s family, holidays are usually at least 10 of us total!), I actually was looking forward to hosting a small dinner for two. Because you guys, it meant we could make whatever we wanted. My nieces aren’t fussy eaters per se, but with 10 people there is a lot of “can you make it without…” requests that stifle my kitchen creativity.

Since dinner was just the hubs and I, I wanted to make sure we made it an event still, rather than sitting at the kitchen table per usual. I made sure to grab fresh flowers from Trader Joe’s to arrange for the dining room table, we set out the linens for place settings and chilled a delicious bottle of white wine we had been saving from our trip to Positano last fall.

Here’s what ended up on our menu:

• Epicurious had a recipe for Turkey for Two with Pan Sauce Gravy, which was incredibly easy to follow, even with using turkey wings and drumsticks instead of the recommended turkey breast. The hubs declared this the best turkey gravy he had ever had. High praise.

• I make collard greens every year and use this simple recipe (note: check with your local butcher/meat market for the ham hock), which usually ends up as the star dish, and was subsequently upstaged this year by the gravy.

• Smashed potatoes. Don’t overthink this. Scrub a pound of yellow potatoes, boil in salted water, drain, return to the stovetop on the burner for a minute or two to get the excess water out. Then add some butter and cream/milk (and salt and pepper, natch) and smash. I usually add scallions if I have some on hand, which I made sure I did for this!

• The pie of all pies. David Lebovitz’s chocolate pecan (bourbon) pie might be the best pie I have ever made/had. I even made the crust, which terrified me based on all the tales of pie making, because, folks, this is the time of year I am forced to admit I don’t like (fruit) pie. Gasp.

And the best part of Thanksgiving for us – about five years ago or so we started mixing things up with the leftover turkey and now the next day I make turkey yellow curry! The easy route for this is to get the Yellow Curry Sauce from Trader Joe’s, but during quarantine I have been practicing making it from scratch (err, from the paste from the Asian market) and it was the perfect way to use up any leftover turkey!

I definitely hope we are all back together at our family dinner tables next year, but I am grateful for this year’s dinner still being one for the books.