Thanksgiving Traditions
Thanksgiving is here, kicking off the holiday season. Time to pull out all the family traditions. My family holidays tend to be rather dramatic, in all the ways you can think to define dramatic, and I’ll just leave it at that. But we all still celebrate together. Brothers and sisters, aunts, in-laws, and uncles . . . even when we think that we don’t like each other very much, for whatever particular injustice we decided to let into our bonnet, there would never be a missed gathering or invitation.
But everyone does seem to be mellowing some as we age. & Sons included. Progress.
Good: Family traditions.Since the beginning of time, my mother has made a cheesecake from the Betty Crocker Cookbook. It’s delicious, and she is ridiculous. My sister and I now anticipate the creation story as much as the dessert. Sometimes mom falls asleep when it’s in the oven and burns it, other years she forgets how to make it (we don’t know how this is possible as she has the recipe), sometimes she experiments on the topping (with that year’s fad dieting) . . . I could go on. But this cheesecake still manages to taste good no matter what variable factors have conspired against it, and it would not be Thanksgiving without it.
Betty Crocker is a fictional character! I didn’t know until I just looked it up. She most definitely is not a predecessor to Martha Stewart, which I had previously pondered.
At 23 years old I aspired to have my own traditional contribution. I wanted to force a must-have staple on the day. Twenty years later, I think I’ve finally arrived. Two years ago my sister asked if I was going to bring it to dinner, and so I’ll not forget it.
A more recent tradition, that I started on Thanksgiving 2017, is “Drumsticks.” It’s Rice Krispies treats masquerading as turkey legs. Take a pretzel rod, dip it in white chocolate, and stick 2 mini marshmallows to one end. Set on parchment or wax paper to dry. We like to get as realistic as possible (think Netflix’s Is It Cake? https://youtu.be/doFNS7BtwPw) so when they are set, we take a paring knife to carve it into a perfect cylinder, like the bone part of the turkey leg. After these are all ready, make a batch of Rice Krispie treats The Original Rice Krispies Treats™ Recipe - Rice Krispies®. LET IT COOL A BIT, because you will be molding it with your hands. With or without gloves, hot sugar will melt your skin off. Grab a handful of marshmallowy goodness and form it around the other end of the white chocolate pretzel rod to make it look like a turkey leg. I like to use a can of spray oil to lube up my hands, otherwise it gets mighty frustrating when I release my form and its like a handful of marshmallow-strand spiderwebs.
We are on our ninth year of making these. They are tedious and addictive to children, so think twice about whether you want to add this to a lifetime of holiday traditions. The & Sons will not tolerate a Thanksgiving without them. In 2024, & Son Three made them all by himself and again this year. I think I have officially passed the torch.
Bad: Wrestling. Not really. What a great source of conditioning and socialization and comradery! However, it is bad for my furniture, lights, and windows. It is the very first fall of wrestling for the & Sons. Over the course of two weeks of practice, I have so far only noticed the loss of a table lamp. In general, wrestling or not, when I hear something smash, I wait for cries of injury or injustice. If none come, and there are no gasps for fear of the wrath of Mom (aka something they know is valuable), I give them a chance to fully clean it up. Maybe even hide it. If I can’t figure out what it is, I guess I didn’t need it in the first place.
Unexpected: This is an unexpected for Past Me. Future parents, listen up. This is about teacher gifts and the weight it has upon your holidays. How could you possibly get a gift to thank the people who keep the school children of the world safe and learning? Anything I think of seems trivial and trite. But I want to do SOMETHING. And nobody wants to burden them with stuff (aka junk). Money seems insincere, and we can all easily go broke when the kids get into middle school and have 6 teachers apiece. I’ve done bags of coffee some years (but maybe they drink tea?), hand cream, kitchen towels . . . I’m trying to get ahead of it this year, and I started with Thanksgiving gifts by making ten 6” pumpkin cheesecakes. Off I sent & Sons Two and Three with giant bags of cheesecakes. I said: “Distribute these as you see fit.” I may not be reaching all the intended-to-be-thanked educators, but it’s something.
What I’m reading: Christmas lists. See below.
What the & Sons are asking for: Christmas presents. To give them credit, it’s due to family members requesting gift ideas. I feel like the trend of 2025 is organization, or at least concentrated efforts of organization, so bravo to all of us.
The Byers household has a particularly busy schedule the third week of December. In addition to prepping for Santa’s arrival and hosting Christmas Day for about 25 people, & Son Three’s and & Son Two’s birthdays are December 20 and 21 respectively. So the gift lists are long and easily confusable. & Son One always buys what he wants for himself, even close to “present receiving” holidays. Frustrating, because everyone wants to give gifts desired by the recipient, and if someone already has everything they want, what’s left?
So. The & Sons all made proper wish lists this year. Items range from the humble wired EarPods (USB-C) - Apple to the useful Work Pants Carhartt all the way to dreams like snowmobiles and 2026 Sierra 3500 HD | GMC. Don’t know until you ask, right?
This week’s paper cup contains: Chicken Corn Chowder. Not a very exotic choice, but nice and familiar and comfortable. Corn chowder was my first chowder experience. When I was very young, chowder was always haddock. And as most young people, I was not all that into seafood. At least that’s what I believed. One day I was petering the neighbors around dinnertime and they were having corn chowder. When offered a bite I was skeptical, but then it was so sweet and salty and had nothing offending in it. I was shortly sent home because I was eating all this dinner and not the one waiting for me at home. Again. This is a recipe that you can put whatever you have in the fridge into.
Chicken Corn Chowder:
1lb. Chicken diced
Two onions, diced
Handful of celery stalks, diced
Lots of garlic cloves, minced
A red pepper for color, diced (if you’re into that)
Add about two tablespoons of butter to a stockpot, and sauté the chicken until mostly cooked, with some color. About 5 minutes. Add the veg and continue to cook until soft (5 to 7 minutes). Add a little acid to deglaze the pan (lemon juice, white wine, a vinegar), maybe a tablespoon.
Then add:
chicken stock to about halfway up your pot 5 or 6 C (not more because you’ll be adding cream)
5 medium potatoes diced (a good filler to make it hearty. If you don’t want that many, add less)
Bring to a boil, turn down to simmer and cook the potatoes until they are soft. Here is a good time to add the corn. I always use frozen corn. It has less sodium than its brethren canned corn. I added a 16oz bag.
In a separate saucepan, make a roux. Melt about 3T butter and whisk in 3T of flour. Constantly whisk until it has a little color and smells nutty. Still whisking, slowly add 2 C milk to form a paste. Take off the heat. Whisk in some of the broth from your soup until there are no lumps, then add the mixture to the stockpot. Finally, add some cream to make a rich, creamy chicken corn chowder!
