Our New Thanksgiving Tradition

Thanksgiving was the first major holiday event that we would be missing since moving. It was important to me to do something low-key, but memorable as we’d be starting our new holiday traditions in Utah.

Thanksgiving 2016

Yes, 2016! I want to first tell you about last year.

We turned down offers to celebrate with new friends because we wanted to be available to Skype with family. Instead, we planned our own dinner to cook and time to video chat with family.

When we first moved to Utah Keith realized that an old friend of his from high school lived in Salt Lake City. We’d been hanging out with Randy and invited him over for Thanksgiving.

This plan worked out really well for all of us. We had a delicious dinner and everyone got to Skype with family.

Dinner Menu

Somewhere along the line, Keith was joking about making a Turducken for Thanksgiving dinner. This is chicken stuffed into a duck and the duck stuffed into a turkey. I wasn’t so sure about this, but it meant I didn’t have to cook the main part of the meal so I went along with it.

I wasn’t sure what he’d actually come up with, but he’s a good cook and follows a recipe (unlike me) so I figured it couldn’t be too bad 😉

There are a number of international grocers within a short drive of us so we figured it wouldn’t be difficult to find the duck. A good week before Thanksgiving I tried to find duck breast and every place that I called was out! I could find a whole duck for a pretty expensive price, but no duck breast. I wasn’t too upset over this since I’m not sure I even like duck meat.

Keith decided to alter his recipe to be a Turhamkin roll; turkey, ham, chicken, AND then he decided to wrap it with bacon! I planned a couple of traditional side dishes and Randy was in charge of beer and dessert.

Dinner and dessert ended up being absolutely amazing! We felt really blessed to start a new holiday tradition, enjoy a meal with a friend and even “see” our families for Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving 2017

We had started a new Thanksgiving tradition and were happy that Randy would be joining us again. Keith decided our theme this year would be… drum roll, please… Mexican-Italian.

He decided on a Mexican lasagna. We tried to incorporate other traditional Thanksgiving ingredients. For example, the lasagna was made with turkey; we made homemade sweet potato croutons on the salad with dried cranberries, walnuts, and feta cheese, we made cornbread with cranberry topping, etc. The entire meal ended up being easy to make, especially for me… I was in charge of the salad, black beans, and fried corn for salsa toppings and a vegetable tray!

I was a little concerned that we couldn’t top the meal from last year, but everything was amazing and we enjoyed another Thanksgiving together. We are so thankful!

Thanksgiving traditions

What is your favorite Thanksgiving tradition? Have you ever had to create new traditions? How do you connect with family for the holidays, especially if you live far away?