Home Movies Thanksgiving 2023

IT'S THE MOST WONDERFUL TIME OF THE YEAR

Hello and welcome to Home Movies Wednesday! If you’ve found your way over by some miracle but are not yet subscribed, here, let me help you with that:

:) / photo of smiling green bean by Chris Bernabeo

WELCOME BACK, FRIENDS (welcome back me, as well). I know it’s been a minute and I appreciate your patience with my absence. Aside from getting married, opening a small grocery store and launching a podcast, the last few months had me busy producing my favorite piece of annual holiday content for your viewing cooking and reading pleasure. You could say I was “overextended” and tried to “do too much,” but as we all know, things happen when they’re supposed to, even if that’s all at once.

More on all the above soon, but today we’re going to focus on Thanksgiving. It’s here, and it’s glorious.

This year I wanted to focus on one of the questions I get most often, which effectively all boils down to one version of: How can I please everyone?

And, well, the answer is….

That said, I think this is a menu that comes close (the only part of Thanksgiving I’m qualified to help with when it comes to pleasing everyone). It’s got more do-aheads than usual (both the gravy AND the turkey can be made ahead??!) and happens to be extremely considerate of dietary restrictions (gluten-free, nut-free and dairy-free modifications all easy and allowed!).

There will be familiar favorites (I’m still making stock the night before and I'm going to make the same stuffing recipe until I am too old to make my own stuffing), and of course, new friends (Spicy green beans! Potatoes TWO ways! Drippings-free gravy! The Best Salad I Have Ever Had and…a cameo from one giant glass of punch (no recipe)).

Thank you to the whole Home Movies Thanksgiving team for your work this year: Daniel Hurwitz (director), Sean Ryan (DP), Erron Francis (B-Cam), Yves Albaret (audio), Alec Cohen (editor), Ben Vigus (AE), Jane Morgan (food assist), Natalie Bolton (graphics), Britt Cobb with the typography (more on that below), David Cho and Elena Rodriguez-Villa, all of the strangers and friends who submitted opinions and thoughts, all of my friends who came over for Fake Thanksgiving (Fakesgiving?), and of course, my husband Max who graciously accepts The Home Movies Thanksgiving Experience as his new reality, every year, for the rest of his life.

A very special thank you to Fresh Direct for sponsoring this years Home Movies Thanksgiving! To have a very CASUAL and STRESS-FREE Thanksgiving of your own, you can have your ingredients delivered (pre-ordered, even!), and you can shop everything you need here. If you’re a new customer (can’t relate!), you can use the code ROMAN50 for free delivery and $50 off your first order of $99 or more.

You can find all of the recipes on my website for your cooking pleasure, but this year I thought, wouldn’t it be GRAND to make a full little book for people to look at all of the recipes in one place? I thought so.

As a very large Thanksgiving THANK YOU to all paid subscribers, I am pleased to offer what is hopefully the first of many specialty magazines tailored to your holiday / entertaining needs.

Chris Bernabeo and I shot these images over two days upstate a few weeks back (thank you to Jane Morgan for the assist), and Britt Cobb didn’t even flinch when I told him how much time we had to turn the material into a tiny newspaper (not much time). It’s a dream to work with such talented people making things- I am, as they say, very grateful.

Inside, you’ll find a sort of compendium to the Home Movies 2023 Thanksgiving special: all thirteen recipes, a helpful grocery list, and a vague (yet weirdly specific?) order of operations to help you get organized. You’ll find opinions, do-aheads, and a few ideas for leftovers.

What’s MORE is that NEXT WEEK, there will be physical copies of these little newspapers (56 pages long!) floating around New York at some of my favorite small businesses/shops/stores— stay tuned for where you can find them. They will be limited but they will be free. Excited to see them in your hands.

Below this paywall is the link to the PDF— If you’re sharing the link as a paid subscriber, I hope it encourages the recipient to become one themself, so I can continue making these DELICIOUS TREATS.

Thank you for watching, reading and cooking— I am so honored to be a part of your Thanksgiving.

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