Happy Thanksgiving From The Dispatch

We spend Thanksgiving with my sister’s family in New York (our family gets Passover in D.C.). About 10 years ago, we were looking for a way to avoid Friday night leftovers (as good as they are), and we ended up settling on Hometown BBQ in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn. The food and drinks were amazing; the live country music rocked. We were sold.

We’ve been back every Black Friday evening since. Side note: Stopping right around the corner at Sunny’s Bar, one of the oldest watering holes in New York, for a Dark ’n Stormy, has also become tradition.

A core belief of mine (probably not unrelated to my name being Declan Patrick Garvey) is that there is not a wrong way to eat a potato. Mashed? Great. Scalloped? Tremendous. Deep-fried? Superb.

In Thanksgiving TMDs past, I believe I’ve shared a recipe for a sweet potato casserole (which I am told will be the subject of fierce debate on tomorrow’s episode of The Dispatch Podcast), but today I’d like to highlight the most recent addition to my tater repertoire: the twice-baked potato. You can find a simple recipe here, but the gist is this: put a bunch of potatoes in the oven; cut them in half; scoop out the middle (Google tells me this part is called the “flesh” or the “pulp,” but I don’t care for that at all); mix it with butter, milk, cheese, and some seasoning; refill the empty potato skins with the concoction; and then bake them some more. As an added bonus, you can pretend the whole thing is healthy because you’re still eating the potato’s skin, and according to what my parents told my brothers and me growing up, “that’s where all the nutrients are.”

In addition to the humble potato, I have so much to be grateful for this year. My beautiful wife, who puts up with me working way too many hours as we continue building The Dispatch, and our dog Penny, who spends many of those hours sitting in her bed next to my desk and waiting for treats. My family in Chicago that I will see for Christmas next month, and my family in Des Moines that I will see later today if Thanksgiving traffic allows. The best friends anyone could ask for, several of whom got married this year, giving us a chance to spend more time together than we otherwise would. The opportunity to work with first-rate journalists here at The Dispatch and at SCOTUSblog—our ranks are growing by the day!—and a first-rate journalist who trusted me to work with him on a second book project. The Dispatch members who have made it all possible. Our church here in D.C., which reminds me what truly matters. And speaking of what truly matters, of course, Ben Johnson, whose “Good, Better, Best” mantra has somehow catapulted the Bears into first place in the NFC North.

Who says an American Thanksgiving needs to be celebrated in the U.S.? After visiting my sister—who is currently studying abroad in Copenhagen—my family and I decided to visit Prague for the week of Thanksgiving. While it will be my first Thanksgiving with no turkey and stuffing, the weather forecast shows it could also mark my first snowy Thanksgiving. Too bad I forgot to bring a sled. (While, in college, I got away with using a dormmate’s mattress as a sled once, but I am not bold enough to try the same with my Airbnb bedding.) 

It is also my first time visiting a former Soviet Union territory, and, while the Czechs may not be celebrating Thanksgiving, I got a clue from one cafe on one thing locals here are thankful for, based on its Wi-Fi name, “Smrt komunismu”—“Death to communism.” The Wi-Fi password? The date of the beginning of the Velvet Revolution. 

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I should say that I am grateful for a great many things. Somewhere on that very long list—before No. 48 (Not Going Bald Like My Father) but well after No. 4 (Being Born in the U.S. of A)—is the fact that I’ve been lucky enough to have a mom and then a wife who are fantastic cooks.

My mom loved to cook, and she did the full Norman Rockwell spread for Thanksgiving, with a special emphasis on gravy and mashed potatoes. Because I love scalloped potatoes, she made those too. But mom felt it was a crime to have gravy without mashed potatoes on the table, because mashed potatoes are the delivery mechanism for gravy. It says so in the Bible—or so she assured me. But once she confirmed that my wife, the Fair Jessica, met her standards, she stopped cooking holiday meals entirely. It wasn’t so much a passing of the baton as a “This is your problem now; let me know when we should arrive” kind of thing. 

I don’t want to disparage anything that Jessica makes—because it’s all good. And I should note that I have been put in charge of deep frying the turkey on several occasions, and I think that’s my favorite method. But the dish that Jessica makes that gets the most rave reviews is a surprising one: Celery salad with dates, walnuts, and pecorino. I offer this recipe in part because it’s the only really non-traditional one we do at Thanksgiving, but also because it’s the best salad to contrast with all the really heavy, mushy stuff. It’s cold, crispy, crunchy, and refreshing—which is sort of perfect alongside all of the other fare.

Because we are both writers, we take plagiarism very seriously. So we have to confess that the recipe we use comes from Food & Wine. (I have written for that magazine, by the way. That’s item No. 6,014 on my list of things to be grateful for.)

When I think back to the Thanksgivings of my pre-adult years in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, they’re a blur of family, friends, football, and food. Long days of mischief-making with my older cousins; pre-Thanksgiving Wednesday nights at the local bar catching up with friends home from college; no-pads tackle football with my high school buddies; the Packers on television with games against the Lions or the Cowboys; and, finally, a late-afternoon family feast served on the rarely-used blue and white china, with a big group crowded around the formal dining room table. Undoubtedly, the most meaningful part of those holidays was the time spent with loved ones. But the most memorable? The food.

I’ve already shared my mother’s recipe for creamed spinach, which Sarah Isgur can attest is as good as I remember it. But it wasn’t just the spinach. It was her squash, too. That light-brown, burnt-orange color—with hints of brown sugar and beautiful, glistening pools of melted butter on the top. I’m not kidding—my mouth began to water as I typed that. It was incredible; so good that every year I had to be reminded to leave some for others who might also enjoy a serving.

How much did I like it? One year, when I was in elementary school, my mom was preparing for my early-November birthday party and informed me that I could create the menu for the festivities. For the most part, I chose the kind of food you’d expect from a kid that age: pizza, mac and cheese, brats, etc. But the star of that birthday meal was the star of Thanksgiving every year: squash. I can still see the looks on my friends’ faces as they surveyed their options before cake and cops-and-robbers. And on my birthday, unlike Thanksgiving, I didn’t have to share. 

I’d like to take a moment to appreciate the wonderful food we eat at Thanksgiving. I don’t know the specifics of the great recipes we have, since I am not the one who makes the food each year (which is something my family should be very thankful for). But we do have the usuals like turkey, stuffing, etc.—as well as some other victuals that are not necessarily Thanksgiving staples.

I’m talking about the Lebanese stuffed grape leaves my aunts make, which are absolutely wonderful. I’ve heard that other Lebanese folks are this way, too, but I refuse to eat any grape leaves that aren’t my family’s recipe. It just doesn’t feel right. As such, I usually only get to eat them on special occasions like this, so they are always something I look forward to.

This time of year is especially meaningful to me because it marks when I was offered my job at The Dispatch. And no, this isn’t one of those “I love maximizing shareholder value” LinkedIn memes, this is something I’m genuinely grateful for.

I graduated in 2020 and was fortunate to land a job as a local TV news reporter, but reality set in quickly. I became disillusioned with TV news and left about a year later without a backup plan, stepping straight into a brutally hostile job market. It took nearly a year to find full-time work. I spent months sending out applications, rarely hearing back, wondering if my resume ever even reached a hiring manager’s desk.

In the meantime, I freelanced — writing, producing, taking on contract gigs at a commercial studio, bouncing between clients, and missing the energy of a newsroom. Then I saw an opening for a podcast producer on LinkedIn and applied. My final interview was with Steve Hayes, and we spent half the time talking about Spain. The Tuesday before Thanksgiving, I got the offer. I walked into my family’s holiday dinner with a bottle of champagne and the best news I’d had in a long time.

One thing I always tell college students is to pick up a skill a newsroom needs in addition to being a good reporter. My podcast editing experience is what opened the door at The Dispatch, and from there I’ve been able to write and host as well.

The holidays can be incredibly hard when you’re out of work. I’ve been there. I’m sharing this because that season does pass, even when it feels endless. If you’re in the place I was a few years ago, know that I’m rooting for you. Don’t settle. Keep dreaming. All good things come in time (Romans 12:12).

Some families celebrate Thanksgiving around a table laden with carefully crafted dishes made entirely from scratch: silky mashed potatoes, cornbread dressing, mac and cheese topped with buttery breadcrumbs. Others are content with Stovetop stuffing, instant potatoes, a few jars of gravy, and pies from the supermarket. I’m not here to argue which is better: The best part of the day should be spending time with family and loved ones.

But our meal is always a little different. My parents owned a small grocery store while I was growing up, and they were known for having the best meat and baked goods in town. Families came to Hillcrest for a fresh turkey, a couple of pounds of dressing, and pies and cookies. When they sold the business, my mom adapted many of the recipes for individual use. Now, the same dishes that people bought from my parents’ store turn up on our table. My husband reminded me recently that he’d never had pecan pie before we met, and that Hillcrest’s version was the best he ever had. So I’ll be making that this year as well as pumpkin cookies, and our nephew is making the simple-but-a-million-times-better-than-Stovetop dressing. 

Thanksgiving was always a busy time for our family, and most of my memories are not from Thanksgiving itself but from the days leading up to it: staying up late to help in the bakery, stuffing the … erm, stuffing into bags and wrapping it for pickup orders, and looking out from behind the counter to see customers three and four deep waiting to pick up their pies and turkey. Things are a lot calmer these days, but making the old Hillcrest recipes is a nice way to connect with the past.    

The morning of Thanksgiving, my family makes a Lithuanian dish called kugelis, an extremely calorically dense substance formed of potatoes, bacon, onion, evaporated milk, and salt. (One cube can sustain you for a whole day.) It involves peeling a 12-pound bag of Idaho golds, grating them in such a fashion that reduces both the potatoes and your arm muscles to mush, and baking for the length of a feature film.

We look forward to the annual “cousins dance performance” at the end of the meal, as all the kids under 10 choreograph a performance of varying ability and coordination for all the parents.

My family has always served braised red cabbage for Thanksgiving, which I look forward to every year as something more interesting than the usual Brussels sprouts. It tastes better if made a day ahead!

I like turkey well enough, though I do remember one memorable Thanksgiving spent eating pheasant and spitting out shotgun pellets. There is something about killing your own bird that makes you feel like you’ve really done something for the holiday. 

I spent much of the first part of my life as a newspaper editor and writer, and if you work for a daily paper, you rarely take holidays off—you take the day before or the day after off, because there’s going to be a newspaper put out on the day after Thanksgiving, the day after Christmas, New Year’s Day, etc. There is a part of me that still feels like I am supposed to be working, particularly on Thanksgiving. And some of those holiday work days were pretty fun.

I write and think and talk (and talk and talk and talk) a great deal about work, and I have never been very good at taking time off—I am one of those people who forget what day of the week it is when I am not working. But Thanksgiving is about enjoying the fruit of our labor, which is mixed up with enjoying our labor itself. One of the things for which I am grateful is that I have been able to spend so much of my life doing the kind of work that I want to do, which really is, as miserable old H.L. Mencken put it, “the life of kings.” And, of course, if you’ve ever really needed a job and not had one, then you know to be thankful for the work you have.