The Bitten Word

Thanksgiving 2016: Buttered Green Beans with Shallots and Lemon

Martha Stewart Living (November 2016)

Bittens, we burned the shallots.

We'd been doing so good! We'd prepped the shallots a couple days ahead of time. (For this recipe, Martha notes that "the shallots can be fried five days ahead and stored in an airtight container at room temperature.") Anything you can do early for Thanksgiving is a good thing. So two days before our Fakesgiving feast, we slice and fried and dried our shallots and stored them in an airtight container.

Then on the day of the meal, we cooked the beans, scattered the shallots o'er top, and snapped the photo you see above.

That's when things got bad.

Thanksgiving 2016: Earl Grey–Bourbon Punch

Bon Appétit (November 2016)

Things to Talk About This Thanksgiving Other Than Politics:

• A December 2016 Bucket List: What do you really want to accomplish before the end of the year?
  
  
• The best book you read this year. (For Zach it was the new Maria Semple: Today Will Be Different. For Clay, it was Modern Lovers.) 
  
  
• Things you and yours might do instead of exchanging a bunch of gifts at Christmas this year. 
  
  
• Fantasy punch recipes. Use this framework: One part sour, two parts sweet, three parts strong, four parts weak
  
  
• What's happening on Westworld (Seriously: what IS happening on Westworld? We're not really sure. And the punch will not help this particular problem.)
   
• How delicious this punch is. Seriously, isn't it good? It's smooth and sweet and tart all at once. (Just don't serve too much of it. Your guests might start talking about politics.) 

 

Thanksgiving 2016: Southern-Style Buttermilk Cornbread Dressing

A Bitten Word Recipe

Way back in 2008, for the very first Thanksgiving we ever wrote about on The Bitten Word, we made a dressing using a recipe from Zach's mom. It's the kind of dressing we both grew up eating at Thanksgiving -- cornbread-based, flavored with sage and other spices, and wet and dense and cakey, with almost a brownie-like consistency.

This is the kind of dish that rarely shows up in food magazines. Over the years of cataloging Thanksgiving trends, we've seen only handful of dressings in this style.

So for our final Fakesgiving this year, we wanted to circle back to that classic Southern dressing that we both loved so much.

But this time we decided to give it a twist.

Thanksgiving 2016: Cranberry Chutney with Orange, Figs, and Mustard

Bon Appétit (November 2016)

We had planned to write about this cranberry sauce yesterday. But then election happened and the Internet exploded and cranberry sauce seemed wholly inconsequential and, well, it still does today, but here we are, because life goes on and Thanksgiving approaches and perhaps you need something else to think about.

So here we are: distraction. 

Perhaps you don't care about cranberry sauce this morning. That's fine. The food magazines didn't care about cranberry sauce this year, either. It was a short, and fairly boring list of cranberry sauce options. So we picked out what seemed the most interesting of the lot: this Cranberry Chutney with Orange, Figs, and Mustard.

If you're looking to step up your cranberry sauce game, this is a good option.  

Thanksgiving 2016: German Chocolate-Pecan Pie

Southern Living (November 2016)

If you're already thinking about your own Thanksgiving menu and you're starting to sweat at the thought of cooking all that food, we have some good news for you:

You can start cooking today. And you can start with pie. 

There's lots of advice about this online, but here's a shorthand guide for you when you're asking, "Can I make this pie in advance?"

• Nut pies: Make/bake the entire pie. Let it cool. Wrap it up tight. Freeze it. Move it to the fridge the night before the big meal -- revive it in the oven before serving. 

• Fruit pies: Make the crust and compile the pie. Wrap it up tight and freeze it. To bake it, you can either thaw the pie in the fridge OR put it directly from the freezer into the oven (it will take more time to bake, of course, if it's fully frozen). 

• Pie crusts: Make them and store them in the freezer, either in discs or rolled out into pie tins. 

We made 4 different pie recipes for our Fakesgiving (8 total pies). Six of them we made nearly a week ahead. Two were today's German Chocolate-Pecan Pie. Two were apple pies that we compiled and froze. The other four pies had components we could make ahead and freeze. 

The freezer is your friend when it comes to Thanksgiving planning. Know it. Embrace it. Start cooking ahead of time. 

Also your friend: This recipe for German Chocolate-Pecan Pie, which was our favorite dessert we made this Fakesgiving. 

Thanksgiving 2016: Celery Root Bisque with Walnut-Parsley Gremolata

Food & Wine (November 2016) 

Hi, Bittens. Forgive us if we're a little sluggish this morning. Yesterday, we hosted our annual Fakesgiving dinner! Twenty-three of our friends came over for a huge meal to help us test-drive some dishes for Thanksgiving.

Cooking a Thanksgiving dinner for 25 people in our small apartment is always a bit tricky. We started prepping five days in advance, cooking whatever we could ahead of time. Zach's sister Cassidy arrived bright and early yesterday morning to act as sous chef for the day, just as she has ever since we started Fakesgiving. (Seriously, we couldn't do it without her.)

Folks started arriving around 3. We shooed them into the backyard (thank goodness for a sunny day) and busied them with snacks and punch while we finished cooking the rest of the food.

Then, we stalled.

And kept stalling.

In other words, we served soup.

Thanksgiving Index 2016: All of This Year's Recipes in One Place. Plus a Giveaway!

Yesterday, we talked about the trends in this year's Thanksgiving menus. Now it's time get down to serious business. 

Here's the full index of every recipe from a Thanksgiving feature in the big food magazines this year -- a catalog of 198 recipes from 9 magazines.

Browse the list to find new inspirations and new ideas for your big Thanksgiving Day feast, and for great meals throughout the holiday season and the winter. There's lots of good stuff here.

PLUS, you can win something! Leave a comment on this post telling us which dish sounds best or worst to you, and you'll be entered to win a cookbook. We'll randomly select 10 comments left between now and Thanksgiving Day, and each of those people will be sent a cookbook! 

Happy eating!

Thanksgiving 2016 Trends: What's Hot This Year for T-Day?

Well, well, well, Bittens. It's finally Thanksgiving season! And you know what that means. We'll be doing our usual full-court press of Thanksgiving Day coverage, including a test run of recipes from our own Fakesgiving dinner (which we're hosting this weekend!). Plus we'll have a full index of all the Thanksgiving recipes included in this year's big food magazines, and more.

Let's kick things off today with our take on the big Thanksgiving trends in this year's food magazines.

You don't want to be caught serving a Thanksgiving dish that's so last year, do you? Perish the thought!

So let's take a look at what's popping for 2016: