The CWD Thanksgiving Primer

Five things to get you ready for Turkey Day

I was talking to Tio CWD earlier this week, trying to get something scheduled which would work for both of us. I suggested a few dates next week, and Tio mentioned those wouldn’t work for him — he would be traveling for Thanksgiving. And boy, did that threw me for a loop. Thanksgiving! One of my favorite holidays¹, and I totally spaced that it was right around the corner. Kind of remarkable when you think about it.

As the handful of you who were with us may recall, last year, we hosted Thanksgiving at the CWD Ranch — the first year that Mrs. CWD and I had the privilege to do so. Prior to that, we spent a significant amount of time gameplanning what we would cook, how we would do it, how we would put the menu together. I think it’s a fairly comprehensive guide and if you are scrambling on what to do for the big day, you can check that guide out here:

This year, for a variety of reasons, we won’t be hosting nor will we be traveling. We’re keeping it fairly local and spending the holiday with Auntie CWD and Uncle Steady and their brood a few towns over. Rather than taking responsibility for the whole feast, we’ll just bring over a few dishes — and, the turkey. Keep things a little more low key than in the past, fitting for a dormant fall.

With that in mind, I figured I’d share this week a few things to help you get into the Thanksgiving spirit². Please do share any recipes, plans, and/or traditions you might have for the holiday and we can include them in next week’s round up — and if you send any photos of your spread, we’ll feature those as well, much as we did last year.

Let’s get going.

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I. The Turkey Dilemma

As I wrote last year, the turkey is my favorite part of Thanksgiving. Nana CWD was famous for roasting somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 pounds of turkey for our family of five, leaving us with leftover galore. Soups, sandwiches, cold turkey legs eaten right off the bone — I love it all. Mrs. CWD’s family, on the other hand, views the turkey more as a sideshow piece. A single turkey breast might suffice at their Thanksgiving table.

Now, I’m not going to tell anyone how to host Thanksgiving³ , but in my mind, you need to have a nice big turkey. Preferably one from a local turkey farm⁴. Preferably smoked. I’m a simple man, with simple tastes, but this is the best way to make a turkey.

Auntie CWD kindly will be supplying the turkey this year from their local farm, but I have been tapped to cook it. Since bringing my trusty Traeger isn’t a convenient option — just too big to transport — I’m taking a flyer and trying out this semi-portable option from RecTeq: the Bullseye. While I haven’t tried it out yet, I’m hoping that we’ll be able to throw this in the Pakmule when we head over to the party, smoke the turkey — which Uncle Eddie has so kindly volunteered to brine — and then have another toy cooking device to play with use for the rest of the year.

I’ll report in on how it turns out.

II. Giving Thanks

Continuing the tradition I started a decade ago with “Welcome to Freshman Year,” here are a few things I’m thankful for this year:

1. The Family CWD — both immediate and extended. Your love and support are powerfully felt.

2. The Friends CWD. Ernest Hemingway wrote that “all you have to do is write one true sentence,” and to “write the truest one you know.” The same can be said for friends — you just need one true one. I’m beyond fortunate to have many true friends, all the truest I know. Thanks for all you do. Let’s keep forging those bonds.

3. Mrs. CWD. This one goes without saying. She’s included in number one, but entirely worth mentioning again.

4. The laughs, coos, giggles, screams, and snorts from the Kiddos CWD. And everything else about them. Again, referenced in number one, but they make even the hardest days not just bearable, but joyful.

5. You, the readers. Thanks for sticking around and reading my rambling. I appreciate all your feedback, both public and private!

III. Thanksgiving Mood Board

IV. “Dear CWD: I’ve been invited to Thanksgiving Potluck, but I can’t cook! What do I bring!?”

Dear Helpless,

Thanks for writing in and glad you asked. While I’m appalled that you think you “can’t cook,” not to worry. You can show up to a potluck and still make a splash, even if you don’t know your sous-vide from your smoker. I’m going to answer based on what a few of you readers might suggest.

Given you’re even asking the question, I’m assuming you’re not Freidaddy⁵, who even if he could cook, would bring a delightful bottle of wine. If you’re reader Boss Bill⁶, who certainly can cook, you’d still bring oysters⁷ (if you can’t walk out into the ocean and snag your own, Island Creek is a good option). Uncle CWD down in Florida would probably suggest you bring a jar of peanut butter, since that’s mostly what he subsists on. I don’t recommend that, but these no-bake peanut butter cookies might pass muster.

If you were GMA CWD, and suddenly found yourself unable to cook, you might choose to craft something. If you can’t craft, you could head out into the nearest bit of woods and look for some oriental bittersweet. While the berries are beautiful in the fall and winter, it’s a highly invasive plant — so by cutting away the vines to bring as a gift, you’re not only adding some seasonal decor to the host’s home, you’re also doing your part to help bring back native species. Nana CWD would probably just bring licorice.

If all else fails, you can order some pies from Goldbelly and tell everyone you got them from that little farm down the road.

IV. A Parting Song

About this time last year, I wrote about Noah Kahan and the idea of “stick season.” Three-hundred and sixty-five some days later, I’m still listening to that album. On his song “Everywhere, Everything,” Kahan laments that “it’s been a long year” and that “all of his book pages are dog-eared.” While this year in many ways felt like a whirlwind, the last month or so here on the ranch has very much felt like a long year. The fact that the same themes keep coming up — and, as this post suggests, topics — suggests that perhaps my own book’s pages are getting dog-eared as well.

That’s life I suppose — things change, things stay the same. A dog-eared book just means that it is well-loved. As I screenshotted last week, we can “proceed in our lives just as easily from love to love as from loss to loss.⁸”

This song feels as fitting of a way as any to conclude this post. We’ll see you next week — and don’t forget to send in photos of your Thanksgiving spread to me however is most convenient; my email here is cowwedoin@substack.com

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1. Along with Memorial Day and the Fourth of July.

2. And please, do get in the Thanksgiving spirit! I was catching up with Roommate CWD, MPP last night and we got on the topic of Christmas Creep. Here we are, with Halloween not even cold in its grave, seeing Christmas trees and lights going up, storefronts being decked with wreaths, boughs abounding of holly. Turns out the War on Christmas wasn’t a full frontal assault on Christmas at all — it’s a border war on Thanksgiving… it’s an erasure of Americana… an attack on turkey!

3. And the minimal serving sizes of turkey at their Thanksgiving means you have more room for the “sides” — so I’m not complaining too much.

4. Or even better, one you got yourself. There’s a great scene in The Old Man and the Boy — one of my recent favorites, though the book itself is quite old — where the narrator and his grandfather, at the bequest of his grandmother, go out to hunt their turkey for Thanksgiving. You see, the grandmother thinks that ten cents a pound is too much to pay in the store!

I’ve been keeping my eye out for turkey while in the deer stand this year, and maybe next week I’ll make it a focus to bag one.

5. This is a test to see if he actually reads these dispatches, or just opens the emails to make me feel better about myself.

6. And this is really just an excuse to say “Hi, Kaitlyn!”

7. And I won’t say no if you have a few dozen to spare after Thanksgiving.

8. This is a line from Peter Heller’s “The Painter,” and it continues “this is a good thing to remember in the middle of the night when you’re not sure how you will get through the next three breaths.” Sage advice.