Whether by choice or by circumstance, a lot of Americans are spending Thanksgiving alone. Some are too busy with work or school, or can’t afford to travel. Others have family tensions or prefer to skip the dinner-table questions and bad jokes. A few are even crossing to Canada, where it’s just another Thursday.

via Table For One, Please. A Solo Thanksgiving

Also: How Did Thanksgiving End Up On The Fourth Thursday?

Photo: iStockphoto.com

nprmusic:

Whether you’re having turkey, turducken, tofurkey or fish tacos, Thanksgiving is about family, food and the soul-deadening stress of logistics. So here’s a mix designed to help you keep your mind on the bonding-fueled feast that justifies it all.

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Illustration: Paulo Lopez/NPR

LBJ looks like he’s eying a wing.

ourpresidents:

Good Eating Mr. President 

Annual Thanksgiving Turkey presentation at the White House.  Representatives from the poultry industry and farm organizations present a turkey to President Lyndon B. Johnson.  November 16, 1967.

-from the LBJ Library

Happy Thanksgiving Tumblr!

Poor Pecan!

ilovecharts:

A second helping of Ben Greenman

usnatarchivesexhibits: “Thanksgiving cheer distributed for men in service…ca. 1918.”

Happy Thanksgiving!

These WWI servicemen seem to be enjoying the Thanksgiving turkey a lot! What is your favorite Thanksgiving food?

Item from the records of the War Department General and Special Staffs, 1860 - 1952.

(via Double Take ‘Toons: Happy Thanksgiving! : NPR)

Thanksgiving Secrets: Cooking Tips From Chris Kimball of America’s Test Kitchen: A cook’s secrets are meant to stay in the kitchen. An off-recipe substitution; a unique addition; an improvised technique — they often come from inspiration, or just a sense of craft, that can make a home chef both proud and protective. Luckily for us, Chris Kimball of America’s Test Kitchen is happy to share the secrets he’s picked up in more than 30 years of cooking. Make the dishes using these recipes.

Photo: Becky Lettenberger / NPR

nprmusic:

Whether you’re having turkey, turducken, tofurkey or fish tacos, Thanksgiving is about family, food and the soul-deadening stress of logistics. So here’s a mix designed to help you keep your mind on the bonding-fueled feast that justifies it all.

What do Susan Stamberg and Coolio have in common? Cranberry relish, of course.

Every Thanksgiving here at NPR, we have a tradition of rolling out what Susan calls Mama Stamberg’s cranberry relish recipe. It looks like Pepto Bismol mixed into drywall, but it tastes a lot better than it looks. Trust me - I had a batch of it made by Susan herself last year and surprised myself when I went back for seconds. Okay, thirds. Ahem.

Anyway, Susan decided to send the recipe to Coolio, who’s got his own cooking show, and he whipped up his own version, which he calls “Mama Stamberg and Coolio’s Wild Cranberry Pinkout.” He even improvised a short rap about it:

You take some cranberry
A little bit of horseradish
And some onions.
Now I got a relish fetish.
Mama Stamberg
That’s what you heard.
It’s Coolio, not Stamberg
With some cranberries
And a little bit of onion, y’all.
And some horseradish.
Now I got a fetish
For that relish.
And it’s Pinkout.
Better pull your drink out.

“I had to censor it,” Coolio admits. Indeed.

Intrigued? Check out the recipe and listen to Coolio’s take on it.

“This modern version of Thanksgiving would horrify the devout Pilgrims and Puritans who sailed to America in the 17th century. The holiday that gave rise to Thanksgiving — a ‘public day’ that they observed regularly — was almost the precise opposite of today’s celebration. It was not secular, but deeply religious. At its center was not an extravagant meal, but a long fast. And its chief concern was not bounty but redemption: to examine the faults in oneself — and one’s community — with an eye toward spiritual improvement.”

- Historian Eve Laplante, originally quoted in a 2007 Boston Globe article. NPR’s Linton Weeks takes a look at how the excesses of Thanksgiving have become, well, excessively excessive.