Last Thanksgiving, we traveled to six homes across the country to learn how families gathered.
As told to Betsy Andrews
What a year this is for Thanksgiving!
Here atEatingWellif we may pull back the curtain a bitwe think about Thanksgiving all year-round.
Terrence Gee (center, background) is a financial advisor in San Francisco.Marc Olivier LeBlanc
It’s communion with the other humans we rely on.
The turkey, the stuffing, the pieswe gobble them down.
The feast is delicious yet fleeting.
Erin Shea (not pictured) and her husband, Lee Chizmar (far left), have three Lehigh Valley-area restaurants.Lynn Johnson
The family and friendships?
Those last and last.
It’s a chance to show off what you have up your sleeve.
Karen Washington (not pictured) is co-owner of Rise & Root Farm in Chester, New York.Nick Burchell
And our meal is a cultural mashup.
My sister, Sabrina, for example, is into making gyoza.
We all started the meal by helping her prep them.
Nefertiti Jones (center, singing) is a musician and founder of Haven Kids Rock, a music program serving at-risk children in New York City.Michael Berman
But the dumplings were wrappednot pinched like my grandmother’sinto the rosette shapes that Sabrina learned from a Japanese pal.
I served winter melon soup, ladled out of the winter melon rind itself.
Sabrina thought it needed more salt, but I was proud of it.
P.J. Jones (center) is the owner of Brooklyn-baseed Jay Gardens.John Stanmeyer
And because I had gone crabbing that week, I steamed three hefty Dungeness crabs.
My brother Forrest cooked a ham and a berry-flavored, four-layer Jell-O.
My other brother, Wayne, is the wild card.
Liz Brownlee (center) and her husband, Nate (right), own Nightfall Farm in southern Indiana.Zach Dobson
You never know what he’ll bring.
One bird went right into my soup.
The other we nibbled while filling gyoza.
We teased each other throughout the meal: ‘Hey!
Grandma never added olives to that …’ ‘Wayne, you brought potato latkes to Thanksgiving?!’
We won’t sit together, and we’ll take care around Mom.
The constant, though, will be the enormity of the meal.
There are always so many huge dishes, we’ll be eating leftovers for a week."
Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania
Oysters, Anyone?
Back then, we lived right upstairs.
When we bought our house, we couldn’t fit everyone for a sit-down meal.
So we dreamed up a pre-party instead.
Champagne and oysters, 10 a.m. to noon?
But who would have time to come?
There’s no formal invitation.
And if you have someone you want to invite, they are welcome too.
Elbow to elbow in front of the food, relationships get forged at this party.
Kids are running everywhere.
It’s blissful chaos.
This time we served 800 oystersRhode Island’s East Beach Blondesand Lee made hot sauces and a shiitake mignonette.
There was a table for homemade bagels and smoked salmon with all the accouterments.
Another was piled with meats and cheeses and cold noodle salads from Mr. Lee’s, our Japanese-inspired eatery.
The sparkling rose flowed and drinks flew out of the Bloody Mary bar.
Our Great Dane, Moose, roamed around.
We taught everyone how to shuck their own oysters.
It was wonderful in that ‘we will never have all these people in the same place again’ way.
Except we do, year after year.
When she passed, I wanted to continue that with my daughter.
Her kids were at the table with the string beans.
We took all that food to my cousin’s house, where 15 or so of us gathered.
So instead of ham hock or fatback or bacon grease, we flavored foods with smoked turkey.
The drink of choice was water.
And, as always, we thought about portion control.
But though we eat a little differently than the elders did, we don’t forget them.
We sat at my cousin’s table and talked about loved ones we miss.
We shared the history so that the younger ones can understand how important family is.
This year, we have been practicing staying together with our weekly Zoom sessions.
So it might have to be virtual, but we are determined we will have family Thanksgiving!
And, even if it’s over the internet, we will say grace.
Before the mealbefore each and every meal, in factwe thank the ancestors and give them respect.
It epitomizes how thankful we are to support each other."
We live this very creative life in Manhattan’s East Village.
Our Thanksgiving celebrates that.
I’m a native New Yorker.
I loved that tradition so much that I brought it back with me.
We ended up with 19 people jammed into our two-bedroom apartment, a mishmash of artists from all walks.
We partied till midnight.
Mikey P was there.
He looks like a pirate, and as a merchant marine, he’s had run-ins with real pirates.
‘Tales of the Sea with Mikey P’that’s what we call his stories.
She’s covered in tattoos.
Alanna cooked amazing enchiladas and showed off this elaborate safety-pin jewelry she makes.
We stuffed ourselves silly.
Then out came the instruments.
Byron Bangs belted songs in his wild tenor voice.
Joan, from an all-girl Led Zeppelin cover band, jammed on the keys.
Jimi played all the strings: guitar, bass, mandolin, banjo.
‘Wonderwall,’ ‘Ziggy Stardust’people joined in, singing on-key, off-key, drumming on the coffee table.
In 2020, with the virus, who knows what’ll happen.
Mikey P is stuck out at sea.
Our work has been tough, with gigs and tours canceled.
It includes the line, ‘The music is just right.’
And, on Thanksgiving, it was."
Providence, Rhode Island
Game On - P.J.
Jones
Dave and I are super family-oriented.
We got married in 2017, but we’ve been together for 18 years.
Henry is 15 and Jude is 17.
The meal was traditional New England: succotash and sweet potatoes for sides.
But when my sister-in-law learned that Dave’s vegan sister was joining us, she went vegan crazy.
She used vegan ‘butter’; she picked up dishes at an Indian restaurant.
I was jealous of her hostess skills.
Then I got to exercise my competitive streak because our family loves post-dinner games.
We played a cutthroat game of Sequence, or ‘Sequins,’ as I call it.
Think Rummy 500 meets Connect Four, but with lots of lip and sass.
The kids creamed the adults at the memory game Spot It.
And we cracked each other up playing What Do You Meme?
Though we’re not sure how Thanksgiving will play out this year, for sure there will be games.
Win or lose, the goal is shared fun.
We’re full, we’re satisfied, we’re lingering at the table.
We put our phones away, pull the boards out and bond."
We raise turkeys on the pasture of our Indiana farm, where they plump up on bugs and grasses.
We open up pre-sales for birds in the fall, and by November we’re all sold out.
It sounds transactional, but it’s a joyful experience.
We load up the farm truck at 4 a.m., turkeys stowed on ice in the pickup.
Some were our regular CSA members; others don’t buy from us any other time of year.
It was chilly out, and people were shivering in line, but everyone was chatting with each other.
Those conversations will be more important than ever this year in the context of COVID-19.
People might be wearing masks, but they will commune with each other at the pickup points.
Our clientele runs the socioeconomic gamut.
Some are doctors and lawyers, and others are factory workers, soldiers or teachers.
They span the political spectrum.
But everyone cares about good food; they want their local farms to thrive.
Because if we do, our rural communities can too.
