Holiday getting you down? Pass the Turkey.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, hands down. Well, ok, I also celebrate a series of personal holidays on the day after Valentine’s, the day after Easter, the day after Halloween, and the day after Christmas. Why hinge your emotions on the uncertainty of a holiday when you have the certainty of all the chocolate going on sale the day after? Day after holidays are beautiful things and I encourage you all to celebrate with me (though I warn you, stay AWAY from the Russel Stover “european” chocolates. Nasty).
But of the real holidays, Thanksgiving is my favorite. It’s the one holiday where my family actually gathers (we are spread up and down the East Coast and now on the West Coast as well), and my family is a lot of fun. A lot of geeky fun. Don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it.
And of course there’s the food. I’ve got a cousin that makes cranberry relish (amazing!) and my mother has this double-decker pumpkin pie (my brother and I are always asking her to make two, because we each need one). The same cousin also makes this fantastic pumpkin cheesecake. And there are casseroles, and ham, and my father makes this amazing breakfast spread for everyone (with Polyface meats this year!). An aunt makes another amazing breakfast (I really hope she does the homemade scones again). It’s a family with two professional chefs, a professional cook (I don’t know, does he count as a chef? The other two had culinary school), and a bunch of extremely talented amateurs. With the exception of Sci, whose culinary abilities are limited to a damn good cup of coffee.
You may have noticed one rather large omission here. There’s no turkey. We had one last year, and all the years before that, but this year, we’re giving up our free-range, organic, happy turkey (which presumably died a free-range, organic, happy death before we ate it). We never ate the whole thing, and turkeys always get so DRY, even though you try and try…
Fig. 1. In which Sci shows how Dr. Isis has taught her that pictures in blogs add awesome.
Our first Thanksgiving without turkey. How will it go?! Will everyone be…depressed? And is it just the lack of a large bird sitting in the middle of the table getting us down, or is it…something else?
Roiser et al “The effect of acute tryptophan depletion on the neural correlates of emotional processing in healthy volunteers”, Neuropsychopharmacology, 2008.