Ahhhhh! And she worked at Mel’s diner, not Alice’s restaurant.
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And Mel was played by Vic Tayback in both the movie and the sitcom. The movie’s a lot darker. Because it’s…not a sitcom.
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I love the cottage street bakery, so glad to hear they are still open.
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Gosh, I’m so sorry to hear about losing your Dad. That’s a tough loss, for sure. You have my condolences and prayers for healing.
Thanks to you, and everyone for the condolences. My husband died a bit ago, but during the holidays, memories and grief combine to sometimes make it painful. But all we can do is just keep moving forward. That’s what I’m telling myself anyway.
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Yes indeed. Moving forward seems to be the only way. <3
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Passage to India, here in Mountain View, has been doing a big Indian + Thanksgiving food buffet the last few years, and also did that at Christmas. Some of their American food worked out well, some didn’t, but they had multiple regional Indian dishes as well as their usual. If we’re in town, that’s one of our typical choices, as well as whatever dinners church and friends are doing.
But this year? Nah; we’ll probably get a turkey breast for my wife and maybe a tofurkey for me, but all the potatoes and yams and pie and such still work.
There’s a restaurant up on Skyline Drive in La Honda (Ken Kesey’s old town) called “Alice’s”, which over the years has varied from biker bar to semi-gourmet. Somehow it’s never occurred to me that we ought to go there for Thanksgiving…
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I’m leaning towards a rabbit pot pie.
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Your words have become our mantra for the holidays this year. The best answer yet when we’re asked about visits or get-togethers. Thank you so much for sharing.
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I’m not sure if you’re still looking but my local Costco had lots three-can packs of pumpkin last week. I grabbed one.
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I think you live near where we did for many years, first in Acton - then in Harvard. We retired to our second home on the Cape. I miss that area. We are a bubble of two. Thanksgiving and Christmas is going to really suck. We have plans to drive up to Bob’s Turkey Farm in Lancaster this week to buy 10 dark meat turkey potpies (we have a cooler that holds them exactly). Trying to decide if we want to risk lunch in Littleton at the Yangtze River. I have withdrawal symptoms missing Idlewilde Farms. I first went there in there very early 80’s when it was a seasonal farm stand. Oh, well…life has changed.
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We just had a family zoom to decide how to handle Thanksgiving. We knew it would not involve our usually family meal all together (we have several medical personnel that can’t be with our older and/or high risk family members) so really the question was to scrap it all or figure something else out. We decided that we still wanted to have all the family traditional foods. So everyone is going to make their assigned dishes early, and we will meet up the Sunday before - exchange food, and have a parking lot glass of wine. Thanksgiving dinner will be separate but safe.
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Worked for Digital in the late 70s/early 80s and the Yangtze was a lunch treat when in that area.
Also like the Bamboo.
Grew up going to the Hershey’s pool in Littleton with family friends and soft serve ice cream at a little motel not too far away. But in those days Kimballs was the big deal. Just good simple ice cream.
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We first met up with the Yangtze in Lexington when my DH worked at MITRE in Bedford. We really missed it when we moved to Harvard. Then they opened another one in Littleton. I still crave their hot & sour soup, their spicy string beans with szechuan pickles and their potstickers. We live on the outer Cape now. In the land of fish and chips. No Asian food within reach of us. So we occasionally cook it for ourselves.
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Guess this is where it pays to have a small immediate family, and all very local. So far, we are still planning a Thanksgiving gathering, because we’ll be 9 people in total (last year we were 6). Since most of us are still stuck at home working anyway, we’ve felt ok with meeting up for the occasional dinner on weekends about 1x every 4-6 weeks to catch up. We do Zoom/Google Meet or Whatsapp catch ups in between. Provided no one does anything super risky from now until Thankgiving or starts to come down with anything, we hopefully can have a quiet Thanksgiving together.
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Hi @retrospek! You’re right—I do live in the area. Years ago we enjoyed Yangtze River, first in Lexington then in the Littleton location. The Littleton location used to be a go-to but then the quality dropped. So we haven’t been there in years. Might be totally different now.
We really enjoy spicy food, so these days our close-to-home go to is Sichuan Palace in a little strip mall on the edge of Chelmsford Center. The food is spicy and dishes often use a good bit of oil—the cooking reminds me of the completely unrelated Sichuan Gourmet restaurants that folks around here may know. (I’ll try to drive by during lunch hours to see what the dining-in situation is like because we do takeout from Sichuan Gourmet only.)
If you’re going to be in the Route 110 area not too far from Littleton on a Thursday through Sunday, I wonder if you might enjoy picking up at least one serving of the Hot Sour Dumpling Soup (#10) at Gene’s Chinese Flatbread Cafe in Westford. Each serving comes with a dozen or more pork dumplings. I find the soup keeps acceptably in the fridge for dinner the next day, so I think you could take some home to eat back on the Cape. Super no-frills, no dine-in, though you can now order online for pickup. Note again that this Gene’s location is only open Thurs.-Sun.
If you’re on a stock up mission for staples ahead of the holidays, the Market Basket in Littleton is a spacious, newer store with lots of room for social distancing. I drive out of my way to go to that location as they’ve been doing a particularly good job during the pandemic. Also couple of restaurants nearby in the same shiny new shopping plaza, which I haven’t investigated.
I’ll be curious to know what you think of your visit to Bob’s Turkey Farm! I have never been out there though have enjoyed some of their products bought at Idylwilde Farms.
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Thanks for the info! We decided to make the trip next week. Kind of in a funky depressed state right now :o( I really miss Idylwilde Farms.
We first went to Yangtze River in Lexington, as well. My husband heard about it from a colleague of his who worked with him in Bedford. We have no access to any Asian food where we live on the outer Cape. I have to cook it myself if I want it. Tonight’s menu is Massaman chicken curry. I sub sweet potato for white. I have to buy the curry paste from Amazon.
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That sounds wonderful. I love rabbit. One of my absolute favorite dishes is the rabbit sausage from Zuni zcafe. That might be nice for Christmas this year.
As for Thanksgiving, my high risk mother is doing a poor job of staying isolated. I’m staying away from her to protect myself. I’ll probably drop something off but we won’t go inside.
We actually booked a few days at a cabin. It will feel like a vacation, keep us away from people, and make a grilled Thanksgiving interesting.
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We have poorly behaved family members also. It is distressing, especially when they talk about being careful and then meet friends for lunch. sigh
My wife and I moved into our guest room for a few days. grin
I still haven’t come to terms with the reality of this.
Most of the family I spend thanksgiving with every year is local to each other, like @kobuta’s - I usually take the train up and am the only one coming from anywhere.
There are various high risk factors within the family (one subset has a teacher with a small child who goes to pre-K and daycare both, another subset has two kids who are physically going to school a few times a week, a third isn’t even saying what he is doing and is likely the highest risk behavior).
The matriarch hostess is high risk for both age and health factors, so I had assumed there might be a small gathering with just one of the branches and a zoom for everyone else to say hello and hang out for a while.
But no, they have decided to have an actual thanksgiving dinner on the enclosed porch, this providing some false comfort, because everyone is actually indoors and there will be no masks for most of it (we eat nonstop from arrival through dessert 
).
Aside from my brain almost exploding when I heard this, I’m also a little sad to miss thanksgiving entirely, because there will definitely be no zoom. Yes, we’ll have a brief video chat I’m sure, but I really love thanksgiving for the togetherness without agenda.
So I’ll probably make myself a couple of my favorites - stuffing balls, white gravy, and a small roast chicken in lieu of turkey.
The family I’m still with, courtesy covid, actually doesn’t celebrate thanksgiving - they go to a beach resort every year with the grandparents and siblings on other side. So it will be a strange one for them too.
So maybe we’ll have my traditional bits and some mexican food for them to mollify us all 
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Wow. That’s a lot to think about. I am distracted, for a minute anyway j, by " Halloween".
