What we're all having for Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving! For obvious reasons, Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. I end up spending almost all day playing in the kitchen and then all night being gluttonous. This year I have much to be thankful for and I especially want to give thanks to all of you who have been reading this blog!

By now, it's too late to be shelling out recipes (plus there are plenty of folks out there who have done an amazing job of that already). It is pretty fun to get an idea of what's going on in everyone else's kitchen today though ...

Here are some fun sources

This year The New York Times is showcasing photos from around the world as people are preparing their Thanksgiving dinners (not too late to post yours).

A favorite of mine is from last year when The New York Times did a fun interactive visualization of what folks across the US were searching for on allrecipes.com. I didn't even know that "cheese ball" was a Thanksgiving dish.

I also had a lot of fun looking at search trends for Thanksgiving foods using Google Insights for Search. As you can see below, there's been a regular spike in traffic every Thanksgiving, and the searches for traditional side dishes pale in comparison to searches for turkey.

The Culinaut dinner

As for my own kitchen, we're having a traditional Thanksgiving meal with some Asian inspired twists. For example, instead of using a bread based stuffing, we use a sticky rice based stuffing (similar to the kind you can get at dim sum). We're having curried mashed potatoes and also added a bit of Asian pear to our brussels sprouts. Did you have any creative twists on the traditional Thanksgiving meal? I'd love to hear about them!

Hope you're all having a happy, safe, and yummy Thanksgiving!