We had a wonderful Thanksgiving yesterday, and because Thanksgiving isn’t enough of a theme for our family we had bacon Thanksgiving or “Bacs-giving” as we have been calling it.

Themed Thanksgiving started inadvertently 4 years ago when we took a butter count at Thanksgiving and realized butter was the star of that meal. Not only was it in every single dish, but we used 17 sticks total (for 10 people).

The following year we celebrated Thanksgivingikkuah because Hanukkah coincided with Thanksgiving. Opening Thanksgiving with latkes was filling and I am relieved that we don’t have to repeat that one ever again.

Last year we challenged ourselves to bourbon Thanksgiving and we had fun working bourbon into each dish.

Yesterday we celebrated Bacsgiving, complete with a turkey with bacon feathers, green bean casserole topped with chicharones, bacon cheddar cornbread stuffing, bacon bread, bacon mashed potatoes, candied bacon cocktails (the fail of the day), and last but not least, salted caramel bacon ice cream (made by my chef brother).

We had some novelty bacon soda and bacon cotton candy, but it was not tasty at all.

Thanksgiving is all about the leftovers though, so today we had turkey sandwich for lunch and bacon ranch turkey pizzas for Friday night movie night.

On football Sunday we will have Thanksgiving nachos (where you put all the leftovers on chips and bake it with cheese). It is delicious. We invented that one in the mountains a few years ago.

We will have the last of the leftovers on Tuesday for our co-op meal (we trade dinners one night a week with our neighbors). We will have turkey and gnocchi which is as good as comfort food gets.

I didn’t realize until I finished writing this just how many special meals come out of Thanksgiving. It just goes to show that in the true spirit of harvest and abundance, it is the meal that just keeps on giving.

How was your Thanksgiving city mama?

P.S. Here is the hilarious conversation I had with Ellis on Thanksgiving day:

Ellis (dressed in a princess Elsa costume): What happened to that turkey? Did it get attacked by a serval?
Me: No, this is how the turkey comes. We are going to eat it for Thanksgiving.
Ellis: Elsa’s not eating that. Turkeys are animals. Elsa doesn’t eat animals.

(He did eat turkey and a bunch of stuffing, which was a huge victory since we joked about having to serve air casserole to Ellis/Elsa.)