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Uncharacteristically, I didn’t manage to get that many pics of the food at this year’s Thanksgiving! (What I did get is over on Instagram.) We hosted my parents and hyounpark's brother and sister-in-law, maybe they got some pictures?

I’ll blame the timing around the homemade Peking duck we built the menu around - it was delicious, but fiddly as hell; see the giant stack of silicone accessories dragooned into supporting the duck on its butt end when the beer can that was supposed to be doing that job failed. And this was the “simplified” Serious Eats version! But Kay Chun's cranberry-Asian pear chutney, a stalwart of our Thanksgiving dinner table the past 20-odd years, made an excellent substitute for the typical plum sauce.

Thankfully, we had backup plans in the form of Joanne Chang's roast leg of lamb, a recipe we’ve done multiple times over the last few years. The only change we made was swapping out the rosemary for Oaktown Spices’ Urumqi lamb rub - garlic, cumin, black pepper, cayenne, gochugaru, Szechuan pepper, and ginger. (While they haven't fully replaced Penzeys for me, I do appreciate that my spice runs are now a mere mile down the Ohlone Greenway instead of four miles up the Minuteman :) )

Most of our sides were familiar repeats as well, perhaps with another riff on the spicing. The Woks of Life's cheesy scallion mashed potatoes, Maangchi's 맛탕 (mattang, candied sweet potatoes) spiced with baharat, maple duck fat braised greens (hyounpark made that substitute when we realized we didn't have the traditional bacon), a stuffing pulled together from a loaf of sourdough, fennel, cherries, and more duck fat. Even the blender cornbread I learned how to make last summer from Smitten Kitchen is approaching muscle memory levels of familiarity. The surprise new hit: Eric Kim's Little Gems green salad with 김 (roasted seaweed) vinaigrette (from his cookbook Korean American), with another New England callback as it was inspired by the green salad at Eventide.

And for dessert, I made Alana Kysar’s liliko’i chiffon pie (from her cookbook Aloha Kitchen) again. I tried subbing out the whipped cream layer, given the level of lactose intolerance at the table, but I overbeat the meringue layer and didn’t achieve the Flour Bakery levels of meringue altitude I’d been hoping for. Oh well, there’s always next year!