Food is something of a binding agent in my family. For many, mealtimes are a way for them to connect to their families, which is just as true in mine. Growing up dinners were spent together, either eating at the kitchen table or on the couch bonding over a TV show together. Vacations are similarly spent at restaurant tables and bars, eating, drinking, and talking. Thankfully my family isn’t short on great cooks, with my Dad, Grandmother, and sister all impressing with consistently excellent meals. My mom and I on the other hand can cook, with varying degrees of what can be called “success”.
Something most people learn very quickly about the South is everyone’s only a few degrees removed from everyone else. Extended families are large and messy, and friends start to get roped in as family too. This has made Thanksgiving an event of house-hopping, going from my Great-Grandmothers’s house to cousins to friends to our own. While the company and spending time with relatives were always fun, the food wasn’t always the best. Dry store-bought turkey and stuffing were never what was desired after a day of long car drives, especially with children with low attention spans and colossal stomachs.
My favorite Thanksgiving meal I’ve ever had was in 2020. I have a lot of fond memories of that particular Thanksgiving in general. It was one of the first times where instead of visiting other people we just stayed in. My parents, sister, grandparents, and great-grandmother, which sounds like a lot but for us it was unusually small, all at a table just getting to be together. My dad and grandmother had decided to collaborate and fuse the best of their cooking together. My dad made his Italian red sauce, a family recipe he continues to evolve, paired with my grandmother’s Lasagna. My mom and sister put together Italian spinach. For dessert, my grandmother brought out a tiramisu. I still dream about that tiramisu, and honestly, it’s one of the things I’ve been craving since coming to Denison. That day was one of the last times I got to see my grandfather before he passed away in early 2021, making it a very happy time for me.
In contrast, one of the weirdest Thanksgiving was the year when both my sister and I caught the flu. Our typical plan would be to visit our extended family in our great-grandmother’s house a few hours away, but for fear, we’d get her sick that didn’t happen. Instead, we had KFC. Yes. For an article that’s supposed to be about the most mouthwatering non-traditional Thanksgiving meals I’ve had, fast food seems far from the point. While I can’t speak to how the food made me feel, in a year where everyone was sick and going stir-crazy with cabin fever, a meal where we didn’t have to cook and could just enjoy something unequivocally basic shouldn’t be taken for granted.
This year our Thanksgiving plans involve a full day of tailgating. I live in Oxford, Mississippi, home of the University of Mississippi (otherwise known as Ole Miss). Thanksgiving day is our bowl game against our rival, Mississippi State, and while I’ve never been a big football person growing up I spent my fall season getting lost in the Grove, reading books instead of paying attention to the football game, and eating lots of food with relatives all gathering together. Later this week we’ll be setting up a tent in the same spot we’ve held for almost two decades, eating snack food all day before filing into a busy stadium. I’m particularly excited because I’ve brought an international friend home for the break, and I’ll get to share this very American cultural tradition with her. It’s also a special year because Thanksgiving lines up with my birthday this year, giving me a day to spend with family members I don’t normally get to see, which is something I’m very thankful for.
While we’ve had years of eating flavorless pumpkin pie in traditional American Thanksgiving fashion, it’s the years where we’ve gone out of the way and done something different, both with our food and what activities we’ve done surrounding it, that have become the most memorable Thanksgivings in my eyes. But at the end of the day, it’s not the food that makes the holiday special, it’s the traditions (or non-traditions) surrounding family and friends that make it a meaningful time of the year. Especially as someone who’s spent most of her education at a boarding school away from home, I’ve grown to never take the time with my relatives for granted. Or their cooking skills, as I have to savor anything my Dad makes before I go back to eating dining hall food again.
