Ten Things I'm Thankful For

Thanksgiving is nearly upon us, and I couldn't be more ready.

It's without question my favorite holiday, and that's not just because it's an excuse to spend all day cooking and eating. Thanksgiving is special for how simple it truly is: no gift-giving, no complex rituals, no religious overtones–just a day to gather with the ones we love and reflect on the things we're thankful for.

Of course, I'm going to make it complex.

Heck, I'm sitting down to write in a break between spatchcocking/dry-brining a turkey and making my first of several stocks. In my kitchen, Thanksgiving's already started. Before I get too deep into prep, though, I'd like to take a moment to share a few things I'm thankful for.

My good fortune

I could really break this one down into ten bullet points itself, but then I wouldn't have room to write anything silly, so I'll roll it into one: I am truly blessed. I have a loving partner, two wonderful kids, a wonderful network of friends and family, a job I like, good health, a roof over my head, food on the table, safety and security. To have these things is a gift, and to take them for granted would be a crime.

I'm a lucky man.

Dogs

I will break this one out as a separate item. I have a great dog, but this isn't just about mine; I'm thankful for dogs as a whole category.

They're amazing!

Think about it: tens of thousands of years ago, a subset of wolves just decided to be our friends. (I firmly believe it was their choice; I don't see it working without their buy-in.) We've never looked back, and now we have some awesome animal guys to hang out with. Some of them have jobs–important ones, even!–but like Ken in the Barbie movie, most of their jobs are just "Dog".

Paperback books

This is going to come off as a pretentious anti-technological affection, and an especially hypocritical one considering it's coming to you from a guy who lives inside your computer, but I don't care. I love a physical book. I love that I can read a story without blue light or push notifications or anything in it other than the story I'm reading, and I can pick it up or put it down whenever I like.

Good apples

Being alive both for the era of "the only apples in the store are Red Delicious and Gold Delicious, neither of which are" and the current era of Honeycrisps and Fujis and Galas and Sugarbees and Cosmic Crisps... well, it's a bit like being alive both for the Wright Brothers' first flight and the moon landing.

Agriculture itself is a marvel; corn still a barely-edible grass for thousands of years after wolves decided to be our friends, but the advancement in apple technology in my lifetime alone is staggering.

Stretch fabrics

This one's going to be especially important this week.

I've occasionally indulged in a thought experiment: what's the earliest historical era I'd be comfortable living in? It's not terribly far back, even with the privilege of being a white, straight, cisgender man in America, a demographic to which history has generally been pretty kind (often at the expense of others). Depending on my mood, I've usually settled on somewhere from the 1880s to the 1960s as the earliest back I could go, and that's largely driven by how bad I think the past probably smelled.

That said, I've really come to take for granted the fact that even jeans and khakis have stretchy fabrics in them now, and I might have trouble in 2012 at this point.

Insulated coffee mugs

I drink one 20-ounce mug of coffee each day, and most days it takes me the entire day to drink it. It's pretty rad that it can still be warm by mid-afternoon.

Shout out to mugs.

Cooking as a pastime

Obviously, Thanksgiving is a special animal for the culinarily-inclined–

–but I genuinely do love cooking.

It's a chance to be a little bit creative, a little bit scientific and just a little bit magic, and at the end you get to eat something. Sure, sometimes it's a chore (dinner happens every night) but it's nice when I can shut out every other part of my day and just vibe out in the kitchen. I'm grateful for a full pantry, access to a dizzying array of foods, and the tools to learn how to make whatever I want.

On that note–

Anonymous YouTubers

Saying anything positive about YouTube is a bold move for someone with two grade-school-aged children who love MrBeast, Moriah Elizabeth, PrestonReacts and all sorts of other grating pseudocelebrities whose names and voices I wish I didn't know as well as I do.

I can accept them, though, if only as the price we pay for a service where someone, somewhere has solved the exact problem you're dealing with and made a monotone, no-production-value six-and-a-half minute video explaining exactly how to fix it. Last week, my son was stuck on some math homework after missing a lesson, and it was a type of math we did not learn when I was in school. I searched the worksheet name, and lo and behold–a math teacher had recorded his lesson on that exact sheet, thus explaining to me (an architect) how to do 5th-grade math.

It's a miracle.

People who return their grocery cart

There's a lot to argue about in our society today–a lot of bad actors doing bad-faith things that I do not wish to discuss at any length herein.

Instead, I will say how grateful I am for everyone still doing the small things it takes to live in a society; we only thrive when people do the right thing even when nobody's looking.

Tomorrow

Not tomorrow tomorrow. I mean, yes–the Wednesday before Thanksgiving is a great day to run into your old classmates at a townie bar, and if that's your plan, more power to you tomorrow.

I'm referring instead to the promise of tomorrow.

My greatest strength and my biggest weakness is a persistent, stubborn optimism. Sometimes I feel like a fool for believing that things are going to get better, but if you don't believe it, how are you ever going to get there? Even in dark times, I look forward to finding out what tomorrow brings.

None of us are guaranteed to see it, but I'm thankful knowing that it's there, and I look forward to the good things it can bring–further joys, more laughter, more love, and maybe even a few new kinds of apple.

What are you thankful for this year?

I'm also thankful for you, dear reader.

It's a short week, and I trust that many of you (at least those of you in the States) are already beginning to wind down work and think about Thanksgiving prep or travel. With that in mind, this is going to serve as the "Friday" newsletter for this week, with a few things that might help out over the holiday weekend.

First, some last-minute food thoughts.

Your big moves should already be in motion, but let's talk a few smaller ones.

By now, you've heard my entreaty to make Hot Cranberry Sauce numerous times, but I'm going to say it one more time: it's the condiment your table demands, especially for those leftover-turkey sandwiches.

RECIPE: Hot Cranberry Sauce

The one thing your Thanksgiving table is missing.

The Action Cookbook NewsletterScott Hines

I'm also going to remind you that a slight tweak in the holiday flavor profile can go a long way. If you're like me and can't resist making stock from the turkey carcass right as everyone else is collapsing in a food coma Thursday night, you should pick up some fresh ramen noodles to make Turkey Ramen on Saturday:

Now, let's talk drinks.

For nearly as long as my wife and have been together, some variant on a drink we call The Kids' Table has been a part of our Thanksgiving.

COCKTAIL: The Kids’ Table

Gin / The one thing I make every Thanksgiving

The Action Cookbook NewsletterScott Hines

That relies on Martinelli's sparkling Apple-Cranberry juice, which can be a little tricky to find amidst all the sparkling apple, but it's a delight if you can.

More pressing, I want to talk about two drink projects I set in motion a month ago–ones perfect for you to get started over the long weekend.

Like Humpty Dumpty, We’re Having a Great Fall

A game-changing Crocktober Crossover, some advance holiday bar prep and THE APPLE CANNON highlight a festival fall Friday on the ACBN

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No, seriously, how do you like them apples?

The first of these was something pioneered by my good friend Ramzy Nasrallah over at Eleven Warriors–Apple Pie Bourbon. Per his guidance, I took a bottle of Woodford Reserve, poured out just enough to make room, and dropped in a sliced Granny Smith apple, a cinnamon stick and a couple split vanilla beans.

That sat for a month, and when I tested it out... ooh, buddy, is it smooth. It's the perfect thing to give as a gift to the bourbon drinker in your life, or to bring to the rowdy family holiday gathering of your choosing.

You may not have made it in time for Thanksgiving, but [looks at calendar] wouldn't you know it, you've got exactly one month until Christmas.

It's lovely straight-up, but I couldn't resist making a cocktail.

Apple Pie Old Fashioned

• 2 ounces Apple Pie Bourbon
• 1/2 ounce (or less) 1:1 Honey Syrup (good honey thinned with an equal part hot water)
• 2 dashes black walnut bitters
• 2 dashes cardamom bitters

Add a large ice cube to a rocks glass; shake the bitters over the ice, followed by the honey syrup. Add the bourbon last, and give it a little twirl with a barspoon. Garnish with a slice of green apple.

It's simple, but it's worth the wait.

I put some milk in the back of the fridge a month ago, let's see how it tastes

My other month(s)-long project was to mix up a batch of Alton Brown's Aged Eggnog, long a favorite of cocktail aficionados and kitchen nerds. (I am both.)

It pairs conveniently with the Apple Pie Bourbon project, as the cup or so of bourbon I had to pour off to accommodate the apples and whatnot was just right for that recipe (along with some brandy and a couple of rums).

Brown's original recipe is at the link above–my only tweak was to split the rum he calls for between two of the bottles on my shelf.

• Yolks from 12 large eggs
• 1 pound sugar
• 1 teaspoon freshly-grated nutmeg
• 1 pint whole milk
• 1 pint half-and-half
• 1 pint heavy cream
• 1 cup bourbon (I used Woodford Reserve, leftover from the previous thing)
• 1 cup brandy (I used Copper & Kings)
• 1 cup Jamaican rum (I used a split of Planteray OFTD and Doctor Bird)

Now, I've made eggnog before, but I've never aged it for this long. Frankly, I had to overcome the weirdness of letting dairy sit that long, but a mixture over 14% ABV will not go bad. After a month-plus of anticipation, I cracked it open, grated some fresh nutmeg over top, and–

Oh, this was spectacular. That Alton Brown must know what he's doing, huh?

If you've only ever had store-bought eggnog, this is a whole different ballgame; none of the cloying chemical aftertaste, just pure smooth goodness. It's like melted ice cream with all the best notes of bourbon, rum and brandy and none of the bite.

Once again, the best time to have started this was a month ago, but the second-best time is right now.

Shout out to public broadcasting

Okay, so I offered some grace for YouTubers up top, but that was all for show. I am not going into a four-day weekend with the expectation that I will have to hear Jimmy Donaldson's smarmy voice.

Thanks, then, to PBS for dropping The American Revolution, the much-anticipated six-part, twelve-hour documentary from Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt. It's been out for a little over a week now, and we've been slowly chipping away at it. It's predictably terrific.

My wife has already made clear to the kids: we can watch this all at once, or we can watch it over the next month but we are watching all sixteen hours whether you like it or not.

My only complaint is that it doesn't have a Trent Reznor score like Burns' The Vietnam War did, but, y'know, I get it. (I bet it would've been great, though.)

Shout out to one particularly good dog

Normally, I end my Friday newsletters with a handful of reader-submitted pets.

I've got a few still stacked up in my queue, but I'm going to hold them for another week, because I want to dedicate today to my best boy. Sunday marked Olaf's Gotcha Day, the fourth anniversary of when we brought home an anxious, rowdy, incorrigible mutt who'd already been surrendered twice.

He was an absolute nutcase for the first few months. He dug holes in the yard. He was terrible on leash. He'd wake up in the middle of the night every night. He ate an entire Advent calendar (cardboard and chocolate). Despite his best efforts to be friendly, he made a mortal enemy of our beloved corgi Holly, who I'm pretty sure never forgave us for the intrusion on her peaceful retirement.

Did I mention we did this all two days before Thanksgiving? That was a fun call to my parents. "Hey, when you get here, there's going to be an emotionally-damaged large dog you weren't expecting."

Anyways, we soldiered through, and four years later, he's an inseparable part of our family–and a very good dog to boot, one who spends most of his time sleeping in front of my wife's desk or hanging out in the yard with the bunnies and squirrels who have learned they have no reason to be afraid of him. He's also become the kids' dog in a way that Holly never was. (That's not a criticism of my dearly departed lady; she was not interested in being a family dog, and would surely remind me that that wasn't the job she signed up for.)

Sunday afternoon, my son and I baked dog biscuits from his favorite YouTube chef's cookbook, and when we went to get Olaf, my daughter had dressed him for his special day:

(He looks unsure here, but I assure you he was thrilled. He loves his scarf.)

Anyways, Happy Gotcha Day, Olaf. I'm glad you're here, and I'm counting on you to keep that kitchen floor clean Thursday.

Happy Thanksgiving, my friends.

However you're celebrating, I hope you make it a good one–and I hope you've got plenty to be thankful for.

Here's a musical outro for you.

I'll see you next week.

–Scott Hines (@actioncookbook)