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I’m Making the Worst Thanksgiving Meal of My Life

It’s not about the food

Maria Shimizu Christensen
3 min readNov 27, 2024
Photo by Wouter Supardi Salari on Unsplash

One year for Thanksgiving, my son made a Beef Wellington. My daughter made the Yorkshire pudding, and I made pie crusts and filled them with pecans, pumpkin, apples, berries, and chocolate cream.

Last year we collectively made a Peking duck, a roasted rack of lamb, a whole stuffed kabocha squash, and Hasselback potatoes. We’ve been known to cook game hens and poach whole salmon. My son makes a Chimichurri sauce that goes with everything. Oh, and every once in a while, we’ll roast a turkey.

I always make homemade cranberry sauce with orange zest and red wine for Thanksgiving, and I deconstruct a green bean casserole, using fresh mushrooms from the farmers market and frying shallot slices until they’re crispy. There’s a loaded charcuterie board that’s set out in the morning to nosh on all day. My daughter slices fruit into flowers and bakes brie with apricot jam inside homemade puff pastry.

I cook. I raised my kids to cook. As a single mom, I needed them to be self-sufficient. We’re all glad about that now they’re grown up. We like gourmet food and knowing how to make it for ourselves.

But, none of that is happening this year. The thought of peeling a single potato makes me want to crawl into bed and not come out until…

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Maria Shimizu Christensen
Maria Shimizu Christensen

Written by Maria Shimizu Christensen

Writer. Maker. Featured in Medium’s 2021 list of Stories That Started Conversations. I write about life. https://www.mariashimizuchristensen.com

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