Thanksgiving
Rebecca Blackwell shares holiday meal inspiration from the FoodStack library.
This edition of FoodStack reads was curated by
, who writes Let’s Get Lost, a newsletter with recipes and stories from her life as a full time traveler. Rebecca has been writing, photographing, and publishing recipes on her two recipe websites since 2013. In early 2020, she and her husband sold their suburban home and moved into an RV. They’ve been criss-crossing the country ever since, living and working from beaches, forests, big cities, small towns, open spaces, and everywhere in between. She launched Let’s Get Lost in February of 2024 as a way to share more about her life on the road. If you enjoy this post, be sure to subscribe to Let’s Get Lost.Hello friends!
First, a disclaimer: The theme of this week’s FoodStack Reads is American Thanksgiving. If you do not live in the US or just don’t celebrate, I still think you’ll find plenty of good food and new writers in this issue because we don’t need a holiday to enjoy good food, do we?
And besides, most of these picks are not what anyone would call “traditional”, because I am not much of a traditionalist when it comes to Thanksgiving. Ok. I am not much of a traditionalist when it comes to anything.
I have done the traditional Thanksgiving many times. But, as the years went on, I got a lot more loose with the menu, and at some point I just started asking everyone what their favorite foods were and making those.
One year, I made a traditional roast turkey and served it alongside a platter of pork carnitas. At the end of the night, most of the turkey remained and all of the carnitas were gone. I haven’t roasted a turkey since.
This year, we are headed to my best friend’s house for Thanksgiving where we are doing a roll-you-own-sushi party. To each their own. And besides, the most important part of the day is not the food, it’s who we are spending it with.
Regardless of your Thanksgiving preferences, I hope you’ll find something new to try and a new newsletter to subscribe to in this week’s issue.
Also, for all of you hosting gatherings that include people with dietary restrictions, you’ll find some great tips in this article: Accommodating a Guest’s Dietary Restrictions
Smoked Oyster Dip by
Thanksgiving is Cynthia’s favorite holiday which is fortunate since her birthday sometimes falls on the same day. If you are hosting this year, you’ll want to check out all her hosting tips, especially the ones about expectations, which, let’s be honest, are so easy to get all out of wack.
She also includes this recipe for Smoked Oyster Dip which is so my kind of recipe because it’s, as she describes it, a fill-in-the-blank kind of dish in which you can easily adapt it to what you have and what you like. 🙌
The particular beauty of this recipe is how quickly it is to make. And you may have many of the ingredients on hand, just a few fresh items to procure. Chop a couple ingredients, stir things all together, and you’re done.
Roasted Butternut Squash, Leek and Apple Soup by
This soup, in my opinion, it’s the perfect way to brighten up any cold, grey winter day. BUT, I also feel that butternut squash soup is perfect way to kick off a Thanksgiving meal. In fact, the very first Thanksgiving I ever hosted, I started the meal with bowls of butternut squash soup. And this recipe, with leeks and apples feels both warm and cozy and festive all at the same time
Making this soup is super straightforward – Step one, chop and roast some veggies. Step two, blend the roasted veggies with a warmed + spiced broth. Voila! You’ve got one heck of a vibrant, velvetyyyy smooth, golden-hued winter soup.
Roasted Carrot Soup by
This soup is so stereotypically fall it’s almost satirical. It’s colorful and creamy, and a delicious, light start for a Thanksgiving meal.
Roasting intensifies the flavor of the carrots and adds some complexity that didn’t exist before the veggies went into the oven. I think of roasting as giving nature a hand. Like, ok, thank you mother nature for putting all that sweet, earthy flavor in these carrots, but I’ll take it from here.
Aside from roasting the carrots, the only other steps involved here are making a quick broth and then pureeing everything in a blender. Peeling the carrots is the most time consuming step.
Leek and Onion Bread Pudding by
The very first lines of Ellen’s post drew me in: “I don’t know about you, but pumpkin spice holds no allure for me. Halloween is not my bag.”
Same, Ellen. Same.
And then she dives into two delicious recipes - this one for Leek and Onion Bread Pudding and another after that for Leek, Apple, and Mushroom Baked Barley Risotto, both of which would be a delicious addition to any Thanksgiving table.
By October’s end, I’m playing with greens, toasting barley, and caramelizing onions and root vegetables. The run-up to Thanksgiving inspires me to begin stocking the freezer with homemade chicken and mushroom broths. My elixirs will cure any ills through the winter. I’m already dreaming of what to cook for Thanksgiving weekend. The kids will come home to the roost, and the house will be full. They’ll veg on the couch to catch up on TV. It’s all good… they need a breather from oversubscribed days.
Pan Fried Apricot Ginger Tofu by
If cooking a vegan option is a part of your Thanksgiving menu, it would be hard to go wrong with this gorgeous apricot and ginger spiked masterpiece.
This Apricot Ginger Tofu uses fresh ginger and garlic to pack that one-two punch of flavor. If you use freshly frozen ginger and garlic, no worries. I have those in my freezer, too. Otherwise the sauce is simple to mix up and fully customizable to what you love best in a sauce.
Dolores’s Barbecue Brisket by
If you live somewhere where your Thanksgiving meal can be outside, then it probably should be outside and THIS should be at the center of the table. Too many shoulds? Do I sound overly bossy about your holiday? Well, disregard my advice at your peril because this BBQ brisket is something your guests will be talking about for months.
The Sauce has a more vinegary tomato profile than the sugary BBQ sauce we may be used to and accents the smokey meat beautifully.
Cranberry Sauce by
Ok, yes we are talking non-traditional recipes but we simply MUST include cranberry sauce because it goes with everything. This recipe is fantastic because it’s low sugar and, let’s be honest, we are saving up our sugar allowance for dessert, aren’t we?
CRANBERRIES ARE TART AF!!!
Girlies with our UTIs downing cranberry juice know this for a fact. Food companies put a metric ton of sugar in cranberry juice to make it palatable. I really didn’t want to do that with this recipe.
Date Caramel Chocolate Pecan Pie by
Since we’ve already established my bossy nature, you should definitely, definitely check out this recipe which includes a coconut crust filled with date caramel, chocolate ganache, and toasted pecans. I mean, come on.
But, before you get to the recipe, do yourself a favor take a moment to read Nicki’s thoughts on perfectionism and the ridiculous pressure we put on ourselves during the holiday season. This is a train many of us need to get off.
Cooking, shopping and decorating fall squarely in the domestic sphere and are often perceived as acts of love, instead of real, oftentimes overwhelming work.
When these tasks are viewed as love, we lose agency. We don’t get to consent to the work, because it’s love! This gets complicated. I took on all of the holiday planning and executing because part of me truly loved (still loves) it, but also because I didn’t think I had a choice. I was conditioned into the role. I see now that I was performing the holidays, instead of fully experiencing them. I was perpetuating a system that was exhausting me, although at the time I couldn’t see it.
Prepping Pie Dough For The Holidays by
First of all, I was all in on this post with Betty’s first words, “It involves vodka.” Also, she has an entire section titled “Butter and booze”. So, obviously, you are abandoning this post and heading straight to that one.
Now, if you’d rather drink your vodka rather than pour it into a recipe, you can skip this section. For the rest of you, use vodka in your pie dough.
When flour and water are combined, gluten starts to form and this can make a crust tough and leather-like. We’ve all been subjected to a crust like this. Because vodka has less water in it (thanks, ethanol!), it inhibits the development of gluten. This helps to keep the baked crust tender to the bite.
Will you taste the alcohol? Or get buzzed from eating the crust? No, and no. Plain vodka is flavorless and the alcohol burns off during the baking. While there may be trace amounts of ethanol in the crust, it will not taste of liquor and you most certainly will not get tipsy. (Note from Rebecca: I should mention that this is a good-news-bad-news kind of read.)
Gluten Free Sticky Toffee Pudding by
I know it might seem strange to serve a British dessert on American Thanksgiving, but I can honestly not think of a more appropriate finish to a holiday meal than caramel-flavored toffee-sauced cake. If you’re looking for the perfect gluten free way to end your holiday feast, this is it.
This humble caramel-flavored toffee-sauced cake is the perfect finish to a dinner party or Sunday dinner. When everyone has pushed back their chair and declared no more, this cake is irresistible.
FoodStack Reads is a weekly roundup from the best food writers in the FoodStack library. This week’s edition was guest edited by
who writes Let’s Get Lost.Do you have a recipe or food writer to recommend? Tell us about it in the comments.
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What a great list!! Thanks for including my sticky toffee pudding- it really is perfect for thanksgiving!!
So many great recipes Thanksgiving recipes here (and I love the idea of switching up the main course... that brisket!). Thanks so much for including my date caramel pecan pie. ❤️