"thanksgiving menu" news and stories

Starting today, we're dishing out the best YumSugar has to offer for Thanksgiving. First up, their unforgettable Thanksgiving menu. Yes, they've got all the classics, but they also have some great new menu additions like Butternut Squash Soup with Cider Cream and Pumpkin Lasagna (what a perfect way to use leftover pumpkin)! Wash it all down with an Apple Cidercar.

Get Your Unforgettable Thanksgiving Menu Here

"The New Thanksgiving Table: An American Celebration of Family, Friends and Food"
by Diane Morgan
Photographs by Leigh Beisch
Chronicle Books -- 2009
Buy it on Amazon

Thanksgiving may be all about tradition, but that doesn't mean there isn't room for a bit of experimentation.

In Diane Morgan's follow-up to "The Thanksgiving Table," she looks to new culinary traditions on the American Thanksgiving table. While there are old favorites like deviled eggs and giblet gravy, they share the spotlight with linguiça sausage stuffing and hazelnut popovers. This is not a T-day cookbook for your stodgy grandmother.

From stuffing to pumpkin pie, Thanksgiving's traditional dishes are rich and heavy. To complement these big flavors, the wines you choose should be full-bodied and tinged with acidic and fruit-forward notes.

As far as whites go, you'll want heavy wines with legs and complexity that can dance with Thanksgiving sides such as sweet potatoes. Reds are fair game too as long as you choose pairings that partner up with each dish.


Here are some of our $10-and-under favorites with their Thanksgiving dish match-ups.

The number of Thanksgiving celebrants eating out for the holiday is remarkably small: More Americans believe the moon landing was faked than would deign to have their sweet potatoes and stuffing in a restaurant.

Still, depending on whose statistics you trust, there are at least 10 million Americans making reservations for their Thanksgiving dinners this year, which means at least that many food and beverage workers will be spending their holidays away from home too.

I generally don't mind working on holidays: The festive hubbub of a room filled with revelers is often preferable to spending the evening with squabbling relatives. And the staff camaraderie that makes the indignities of restaurant work bearable is never quite so pronounced as on Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve.

The gap between tamales and the Thanksgiving table is continuing to narrow as an increasing number of Mexican-Americans are stuffing their holiday masa with pumpkin and sweet potatoes.

Tamales have been a festive food ever since the Aztecs and other early Meso-Americans served them in conjunction with their religious rituals, says Claudia Alarcon, an Austin-based writer who's kicking off the University of Texas' Foodways of Mexico speaker series this week with a talk on tamale history. While tamales aren't associated with winter holidays south of the border, Alarcon says "I'm pretty sure in every U.S. state where Mexican-Americans live, they have tamales for the holidays."