Just like this past April, the CDC is once again warning consumers to stay away from romaine lettuce due to an E.coli outbreak. “Consumers who have any type of romaine lettuce in their home should not eat it and should throw it away, even if some of it was eaten and no one has gotten sick,” the CDC explains in their announcement on Tuesday.
“How long does it take to microwave a 25lb turkey?” Carlota Andrés messaged to the family WhatsApp. Her famous father, chef, and humanitarian José Andrés, responded, aghast, in a mixture of English and Spanish that encompasses a horror perhaps not able to be contained in just one language. In fact, the younger Andrés was simply enacting the same prank that other young adults around the country have been all week.
I first saw the viral “microwaving a turkey” meme on Instagram, where my friend had posted a screenshot of her hilarious conversation with her mom. (If you aren’t aware of the trend, people are texting their moms asking how long it would take to cook a 25-pound turkey in the microwave in hopes of getting a funny response, then posting a photo of the conversation on social media.)
To be honest, I was less concerned about the fact that she was planning on microwaving her turkey and more upset that I thought I hadn’t been invited to her (fake) Friendsgiving. But after seeing a few more very similar posts, I quickly realized I had fallen prey to a meme.
I assumed it was all a joke. You can’t actually cook a turkey in the microwave, right? But although people were playing a joke on their moms, the actual act of microwaving a turkey can be done successfully. According to the USDA, it’s one of the many ways you can cook your Thanksgiving bird. Here’s how long it would actually take.
This past Saturday, we hosted our second Friendsgiving, stuffing 17 people in an apartment that has no business holding 17 people, but it’s okay, there’s wine for that. Our first one was in 2016; you can read about it here. I took 2017 off because I was a teensy bit busy book touring for Smitten Kitchen Every Day** It was fun to be back.
When having friends over, I like to get everything done that I can in advance and I do this for completely selfish reasons: I want to enjoy my party, too, and I can’t if I’m scrambling around all day and am bone tired by the time food comes out. But last week was abnormally busy and I only got to grocery shopping on Thursday, only to discover that one week before Thanksgiving, it’s like tumbleweeds, the lull before the weekend stampede, all past-prime rosemary and other sadness. I almost cancelled but my husband miraculously found almost everything that evening, and instead I did a very beautiful, highly recommended thing: I nixed a few things on the planned menu and swapped more complicated ones for simpler recipes with shorter ingredient lists but high reward. Here’s the menu, a few details, and completely random tips:
Kitchn’s Delicious Links column highlights recipes we’re excited about from the bloggers we love. Follow along every weekday as we post our favorites.
Growing up in the Midwest gave me a few habits that set me apart from my coastal peers, including a firm conviction that “Ope!” is a real word, a tendency to begin and/or end every sentence with “sorry,” and an intense and unshakable love of casseroles. I can’t imagine how anyone gets through winter, or large family get-togethers, without a big dish of Kentucky hot brown or an enormous tuna-noodle casserole with crushed potato chips on top.
Dear Marge,
I’m planning my annual Friendsgiving, and I don’t want to repeat my hosting crisis from last year — but I’m not sure what I can do to prevent it.
I love to entertain, even in my small place. I plan my menu really carefully and try to make the table look beautiful. Last year, I invited as many friends as I could fit (12!), and scrounged to make the seating work around my regular table plus a borrowed folding table.
When one of my friends showed up at the door with her brand-new “boyfriend,” (I acknowledge the condescension implicit in the quotation marks but read on!) I sort of stammered hello as I scrambled to figure out how to squeeze another seat at the already-crowded table. Not only that, I didn’t have another whole place setting. So much for my carefully planned tablescape — I used an old chipped dinner plate and gave him a regular water glass for his wine. Also, I had made exactly 12 individual chocolate budinos, and spent half the meal trying to figure out how I would serve them to 13 people.
I think it was rude of my friend to just show up with her new guy. She has long since broken up with him (it turned out to be a three-week fling), but how do I prevent this from happening again? And if it does happen, what do I do? It seriously ruined a night that I was really looking forward to.
— Unexpected Anxiety
The turkey’s ready to go in the oven, the potatoes are mashed, the stuffing is going well, but … shoot! Where’s the cranberry sauce? Even the best list-makers and party-planners sometimes forget that one ingredient that was going to make or break a dish and have to run out at the last minute. Thankfully, some grocery stores stay open on the big day, ready to save Thanksgiving and let you pretend nothing ever went wrong.
I love the sweet-savory taste of roasted onions, but who has time to make them? (Okay, maybe I do actually have the time, but sometimes I get lazy — or, more likely, hungry and impatient.)
Fortunately, I have discovered a life-changing pantry ingredient that delivers the same umami deliciousness with a flick of the wrist: granulated toasted onion powder. Created by dry-roasting fresh onions until they reach a rich brown hue, it amps up the flavor of any dish and immediately makes it more complex — less thrown together, more I labored over this. Hear me out on this one.
In my opinion, Thanksgiving isn’t Thanksgiving unless pumpkin pie makes an appearance at dessert. What qualifies as pumpkin pie, however, is loose in my opinion. I don’t always need the classic back-of-the-can recipe that I grew up with. Instead, what I want just needs to be full of all the things I love about pumpkin pie: warm spices, orange-hued sweetness, and, preferably, freshly whipped cream.
In fact, I love using these as guidelines to bring something new, yet still very much classic, to the table every year. Here are 10 twists on the usual that I love.
A festive celebration like Thanksgiving deserves a festive drink. If you’re hosting a large number of guests, skip the individual cocktails and go with a pitcher drink instead. Not only does it serve a crowd, but it also makes it easy for your guests to help themselves at their own leisure while you’re putting the final touches on dinner. Here are 10 simple and seasonal pitcher cocktails we love.