Even more than Thanksgiving, the day after is nostalgia squared, or maybe cubed. Memories rush back from the day before. The turkey. The perfect pies. Seeing loved ones, yet missing absent ones, and being thankful to have both. But now, layered on top, is a day of leftovers that are often better the day before.
My morning after: stuffing in a circle in a skillet with sunny side ups in the center, a piece of pie before that gets under way, freshly made strawberry raspberry jam and angel biscuits.
This year I’m making homemade butter—crunchy maple butter— to serve with them, and I’m sharing the recipe with you ahead of time so you see how quick and easy it is to make. And the flavor is definitely butter squared. Or maybe cubed.
All you need is to pour 3 pints of organic heavy cream in a stand mixer and begin to whip as if you are making whipped cream.
A man in one of my cooking classes asked me, ” How do you make butter?!”
I answered, “Do you remember anyone warning you that if you whipped cream too much it would turn into butter?”
I have a confession to make. I've never made a traditional Thanksgiving
dinner. I always cook something for the feast at my parent's house, but
not the whole meal and certainly not the turkey. I'm not sure I could
take the pressure! Thanksgiving is one of the most traditional of meals
and most of us have very specific expectations about what that dinner
should be.
It was an angela thing and it all started when she sent me a link along with a two word email that said “interesting, huh?”.
Lately, we have spent a lot of time contemplating the ways to explain Thanksgiving to Dane. We are diving into the stories of Pilgrims and Indians, but what I deeply want to convey to her this year, are the two sides of thankfulness - to give thanks for what we receive, while also finding joy in giving, so that we may create thankfulness in the hearts of others. I tend to teach her in ways that are tangible, so when I thought of our activities this week, the Thanksgiving feast came to mind. 
In a Thanksgiving article Harper’s Bazaar published in 1900, the
author, Anna Wentworth Sears, recommends a jolly game of Pin The Head
On The Turkey. Rather than a tail and donkey, this requires a large
paper bird missing his noggin which, given the bill of fare, seems to
me not so jolly and also somewhat tragic. But that’s just me. She also
suggests, should this game grow tiresome, that ‘reciting Longfellow’s
poetry to music’ makes for swell after-dinner fun.