This week's episode of The Sporkful podcast is up! Listen through the player, Stitcher, or Apple Podcasts. (And please subscribe!)
Thanksgiving is our favorite holiday. But this year, we found ourselves starting to dread it -- partly because we knew it was time to revise our Thanksgiving special from a few years back.
The problem is we weren't sure we had anything new to say -- beyond exploring our own mixed feelings about tradition and innovation and holiday stress.
And that made us realize that maybe, after this year, it’s time to stop doing Thanksgiving episodes.
That's right, we're breaking the trend in food media and charting a new course.
This is our last Thanksgiving special.
Dan told legendary food writer Mimi Sheraton about our plan, and she agreed that there's no need to keep reinventing Thanksgiving each year:
"These are [holiday meals] that come around once a year. They are vivid parts, especially of children’s memories," she tells Dan in this week's episode. "I don’t think there’s a reason to change that."
But food media mogul Christopher Kimball (above), of Milk Street and Milk Street Radio, thought we'd totally lost it:
"Dan, I always knew you were self delusional," he says. "As we speak I’ve already placed the date in my computer calendar to be on your Thanksgiving special next year."
As the founder of America's Test Kitchen and Cook's Illustrated, Chris is no stranger to the Thanksgiving food media frenzy -- he practically invented it:
"I’ve done 34 different ways to cook a turkey -- 34 years, once a year. It’s like this karmic turkey wheel, it just keeps turning and you can’t get off."
Listen in to the full episode to hear why cookbook author Kian Lam Kho (above right) and his husband Warren have made the exact same Yankee Thanksgiving meal for the last 40 years.
"I had no choice," Kian says.
And Kian tells us how to put a Chinese spin on Thanksgiving leftovers. (Hint: You need these pumpkin mochi "pancakes".)
This week's episode of The Sporkful podcast is up! Listen through the player, Stitcher, or Apple Podcasts. (And please subscribe!)
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Today's sponsors:
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- Go to SunBasket.com/Sporkful to get $35 off your first order
- Go to TouchBistro.com/Sporkful to get a $300 Visa gift card when you become a paying customer by December 31
Photos: Courtesy of Milk Street Radio and Mimi Sheraton and Kian Lam Kho; FlickrCC/Anthony Quintano
