Canadian Thanksgiving is October 14, 2024.
American Thanksgiving is November 28, 2024.
I want to switch things up this year.
What are your plans for Thanksgiving 2024?
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Yikes it’s October already!
Here are some of the past T-day threads to jump-start planning:
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The New York Times Cooking website & cookbooks are Cookbooks of the Month from Oct-Dec, so if there’s anything from there on your menu, please join in there.
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I want to repeat a few things from last year:
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Homemade beet-tinged Gravlax (over tiny toasts with lemon creme fraiche)
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Shredded potato & sour cream cheesy casserole aka funeral potatoes (from the NYT, made by my friend’s teen daughter)
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Self-saucing Chocolate cake (ditto source & chef)
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The Cheesy Potato Casserole aka Funeral Potatoes recipe that my cousin’s wife makes for Thanksgiving is this Best of Bridge recipe. I hadn’t had them until Thanksgiving 1999. My cousin celebrates both Thanksgivings in Edmonton, because her mom was from Massachusetts. That visit, in 1999, was my first time having Thanksgiving at their house. Another relative brought a corn casserole with olives, something I had never had before. The turkey was stuffed with a French Canadian-style ground meat stuffing which is tastes a lot like tourtière filling.
Best of Bridge was a really popular cookbook series in Canada for a good 30 years.
The mushroom soup is an interesting addition, but I wonder about the salt combined with the cheese
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It’s high sodium, for sure.
I have made a similar casserole with cheese and sour cream, but regular leftover potatoes instead of frozen hash browns, which has worked. Really, it’s the cheese and sour cream, not the processed potatoes, that make the dish for me. 
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I like the Green Chile Corn Casserole from the Isabel Eats site. I might do that instead of the usual corn bread based dressing. I’m also thinking turkey parts instead of a whole bird. We’ll be a smaller than usual group this year AFAIK so a whole bird isn’t really necessary.
We like dark meat more, so I often try to find turkey thighs. Skin-on turkey breasts are much easier to find.
The last 12 years or so, Thanksgiving dinner has been for a table of 3. We had done Thanksgiving with another family for close to 35 years. Their family was growing, and after Grandchild #5 and Grandchild #6 arrived, the pattern changed. Which works for both families.
Small turkeys are hard to find in Canada these days.
We sometimes do duck instead.
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I like the thighs too but hard to find around here except at the Amish market.
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Duck is such an upgrade 
For years I’ve been lobbying to switch to chicken to no avail.
Last year a friend made racks of lamb, which was fantastic. We had chicken the next day, though in retrospect some poultry on T-day would have been nice.
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That sounds really good!
I’ve had this leek bread pudding on my list for a while. My aunt who hosts thanksgiving was looking for a side for a dinner party this weekend and was very excited when I sent it to her, so maybe this is the year. Maybe mushrooms instead of or in addition to the leeks. But I don’t think it could replace stuffing balls. I’ll probably make a batch of those anyway.
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Hahaha.
For a while, I was cooking turkey schnitzel or turkey thighs during the year, as an alternative to chicken during the week.
Turns out my DCs don’t really like turkey at all. Once a year for Thanksgiving is enough. We do a duck or goose at Xmas. Lamb at Easter. Some Canadian families do a turkey at Thanksgiving, Xmas and Easter lately.
I have always liked hot turkey sandwiches and turkey sandwiches. I ordered turkey subs a lot as a teenager and 20something since I didn’t really like ham, roast beef or salami. I loved the idea of year-round Thanksgiving on a roll sandwiches when I lived in NYC for that year a long time ago. In fact, Thanksgiving on a roll at the Comfort Diner on E 45th is what I ordered for Canadian Thanksgiving the year I was in NYC.
So- now, our household turkey consumption is down to a small (<11 lbs) turkey or some thighs on Thanksgiving. I still get turkey clubs and hot turkey sandwiches during the year.
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Back to the inlaws in Atlanta for me!
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Working on booking hotel reservations as we head to my parents this year and their house is too small to comfortably host us and my brother’s family- as his kids are younger and have never stayed in a hotel (pandemic babies. . .) Should be interesting how mom manages things this year as my brother is kinda gluten free dairy free
We do our own mini thanksgiving a week or 2 earlier for the leftovers and cause turkey pot pies for the freezer. I love my mom but she’s not an enthusiastic/adventurous cook but she doesn’t want help except for the dishes.
And for friday we always get pizza from Pizza King which is the best ever (at least to us) and we celebrate that they kept going when their single store was razed to make space for a round about, and they chose to relocate to a vacant car salesroom half a mile over. Things to be thankful for- and my nephew who generally doesn’t like pizza chows down on Pizza King
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I started my Canadian Thanksgiving eating yesterday, with this pumpkin scone from a bakery called Sticks and Scones
Followed by a pumpkin tart last night.
Breakfast today was a pumpkin scone from Sunshine Cake Studio in Ilderton, ON.
I bought some leeks from the farmers market that will go into something on Thanksgiving.
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