Feast of the "7-10+" Fishes

Or, how I celebrated Thanksgiving

I have written about my boredom with turkey at Thanksgiving. It has nothing to do with the bird itself, which — although it takes care to cook well — makes a fine and obviously quite large roast. It’s just that, starting in 1980, every editor I ever had came to me around November 1 and said “So, what are we doing for the turkey story?” or some variation. (It was even worse when the question was, “What are we doing for the turkey cover story?”)

So my schoolboy nature set off, long ago, to do contrary Thanksgivings, those that featured crown roasts of pork, or curried turkey breasts, or seitan loaves, or giant rib roast, or whole salmons, or lobsters, or whatever. I’ve learned a lot from all of that. (Note that I’m not especially a pioneer among food writers in this. Calvin Trillin wrote hilariously for years about making spaghetti carbonara the national Thanksgiving dish.)