Nice menus/recipes. I'm sure I will try something at some point. But Thanksgiving and Christmas are about memories, and honoring the ancestors by carrying on their traditions. They are not just meals to be dumped because someone thinks they are "boring." My mother's cornbread dressing brings her to our table with sweet memories of the turkey she kept on our back porch (in town) until he met her axe. My former mother-in-law's marshmallow topped sweet potato pudding, complete with bourbon, evokes for us memories of how hard and how hard much she sacrificed to keep her family's secrets tucked away so we could believe. She was a courageous woman; more so than I. And of course there is former mother-in-law # 2 who brought edible turnips into my life even as she said, post divorce, "You will always be our daughter."
To serve other than "our" Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners might be a option, but not one for me and mine. On those days, the dining room table is not just a dinner table; it is an altar on which we place loving gratitude for the ancestors gone before who made this day possible for us.
