Good morning. How you doing? House all clean and everything tucked away, ready for the coming prep sessions, the cooking, the mighty feast?
Or are you traveling this week as so many Americans do, striking out across the country to see family back on the farm, in the city, down the shore, deep in the woods? The American Automobile Association says that 55 million people will travel more than 50 miles from home for the holiday. That’s a lot of traffic. Listen to Marlon James’s “A Brief History of Seven Killings” while you idle through it.
Either way, you ought to keep it simple with your cooking tonight, in advance of the big push. I like the idea of this one-pot spaghetti with cherry tomatoes and kale (above), which our Tejal Rao learned from the British cookbook writer Anna Jones. My kids might prefer loaded nachos. Maybe you too? We’ll debate.
I could go for some moo shu pork sometime this week, I think, and curried tofu, and an omelet mousseline folded over a few lobes of sea urchin, then brushed with butter before serving — food that’s decidedly not turkey and mashed potatoes, a pool of dark gravy, alongside yams and a mound of cranberry sauce. Because that feed is coming, sure as tomorrow’s tomorrow’s tomorrow. (Here is everything you need to know to keep the feast.)
And then? Leftovers! Melissa Clark’s come through for us with three great recipes for turkey sandwiches you’ll want to try on Friday: for a turkey Cubano with spicy peppers; for shredded turkey with barbecue sauce and a pungent slaw; and for a turkey and chickpea pita situation with pickled red onions and tahini sauce.
Me, I like turkey à la king as much as a sando. Also, bang bang turkey, maybe more. And turkey and noodles! Thanksgiving leftovers are the greatest things to eat.
Many, many more ideas for what to cook this week are waiting for you on NYT Cooking. (Here’s a collection of recipes for Thanksgiving breakfast, for instance.) You do, yes, need a subscription to access them. When you have one, you’ll be able to search and click at will, to save and organize your recipes, to rate them and leave notes on them for yourself or others, to send yourself grocery lists, even to save recipes that come from sites that aren’t ours, like… Nigel Slater’s chicken tarragon crumble, in The Guardian. Please sign up, if you haven’t already. You can even buy gift subscriptions!
Come see us on Facebook. Also: we’re building a community of home cooks on that site, and we’d be thrilled if you joined. You can find us on Instagram, too. And on YouTube, of course, where as part of your holiday preparations you should watch Alison Roman cook Thanksgiving. Come visit us! (Come visit me, while you’re at it. I’m mostly on Twitter and Instagram, myself.)
And if anything should go wrong along the way, either with your cooking or our technology, please write: cookingcare@nytimes.com. We will get back to you.
Now, it has nothing to do with turkeys or sage, but I loved this look under the hood of David Byrne’s “American Utopia,” by Darryn King in The Times.
C.J. Chivers, who wrote about war and Thanksgiving last week, gave me a cool holiday gift: a mug made by the ceramist and combat veteran Ehren Tool. Here’s Chris’s story about Tool, from The New York Times Magazine this year. I think you’ll enjoy it.
Finally, a taste of the old New York, cold and rainy, Jean-Michel Basquiat, “Downtown 81.” I don’t know why, but it has good Thanksgiving vibes. See you on Wednesday. People get ready!
