Thanksgiving Dinner for Five

Thanksgiving is probably my most favorite holiday. It's essentially impossible to commercialize, and what's not to like about a holiday whose reason for existence is a big meal? Plus, the menu is difficult to screw up. A turkey's a big bird, but it's not really all that hard to cook.

We were able to celebrate Thanksgiving this year in a totally unprecedented manner. Usually, we have a terrific time at a large family gathering, either at our home or at others'. This year, it was just the five of us in Fargo.

It struck me as we were preparing the meal that Jen and I have never celebrated the holiday ourselves – not pre-kids, not post-kids. Even if we wanted to have Thanksgiving by ourselves in Maryland – which we didn't – we would have had to offend, perhaps mortally, a healthy proportion of our DC-based family members, perhaps all of them.

But in Fargo, where it is just us in our little house on the prairie, we could have our dinner without making excuses to anyone, without worrying of offending anyone, without having to justify to anyone our wanting to hunker down as a family of five.

It was a lovely, delicious meal, with all the trimmings one would expect. They grow a lot of turkeys in Minnesota, and I think they may keep the best ones for local use. The stuffing was delicious, as were the chocolate and apple pies. Only the marshmallows on the sweet potatoes caught fire – a blaze count well below our family average – and even they were quickly extinguished and replaced with fresh marshmallows.

The meal was, in miniature, all Jen and I had hoped our family would experience during our year away. An opportunity to catch our breath, draw close, and just be a family.

Would I want to do it this way every year? No. There's something irresistible about dinner for thirty. But I'm very pleased we took what may be our only opportunity ever to celebrate Thanksgiving as just us.