Good Tuesday morning.
You might think that for a carb lover like myself, the Thanksgiving meal offers a plethora of tantalizing options. But the truth is that I could take or leave a lot of them.
Mashed potatoes with gravy? Nah. Squishy rolls with butter? Too ordinary. Mac and cheese? Heavy and gloppy. Squash and/or sweet potato casserole with marshmallow topping? Just…why?
We’ve already been through how I’m not a big fan of turkey. Truth be told, I’m really only interested in two things on the Thanksgiving dinner table (leaving aside the pies, which are a whole other matter and deserve a post all their own) – stuffing and cranberry sauce.
I’ve waxed poetic in this space before about my love of canned cranberry sauce. If it isn’t a jellied log with the the rings of the inside of the can imprinted on its side, I’m taking a pass.
Please do not come at me with your homemade orange bedecked what-have-you. I’m sure it’s delicious, and on any other day I might actually take a taste. But when the holiday rolls around, I want to be transported back to my youth. Grandma always had the canned stuff – didn’t even bother to slice it, just plopped it as-is into a cut-glass dish. (As far as I recall). So that’s how I want it.
Interestingly, I don’t have similarly visceral memories when it comes to stuffing. This is not to say that I don’t have preferences and strong thoughts on the subject – I’m getting to that in a moment. I just don’t remember it being an integral part of our family Thanksgiving. It had to have been there; I just don’t recall it.
Whatever it was, it definitely didn’t have sausage in it, because I grew up in a Jewish household. But these days, G-d forgive me, I prefer my stuffing to be studded with sizable sausage chunks. I also like cornbread, but I will accept stale baguette or even days-old challah as a base.
No oysters or water chestnuts for me. And also, a hard pass on anything that comes from a box. Too salty, barely edible. Hard “no”.
I also prefer my stuffing, contrary to what its name – and tradition – implies, to be cooked outside the bird rather than in it. Cooking and serving a stuffing-filled bird is flirting with disaster in the form of food poisoning.
Today’s PSA: If you do choose to live life on the edge, make sure that a food thermometer inserted into the center of the stuffing-filled bird through the thickest part of the thigh reads 165 degrees Fahrenheit.
Technically speaking, stuffing cooked outside the bird is dressing, which, according to my Southern friends, should be made of cornbread or not at all. But the drawback of erring on the side of safety and preparing your dressing solo is that you forgo all those delicious turkey juices soaking into your bread.
The answer is to add them in yourself after the bird is fully cooked – along with copious amounts of butter and maybe some chicken stock for good measure.
Dressing, though, has the added benefit of a naturally crispy topping, which presents an added step for stuffing fans if you want to remove it from the bird and run it under the broiler before serving.
The history of stuffing/dressing dates back centuries – all the way back to Roman times. I guess the turducken is also an extreme form of stuffing, which, for the record, is actually included inside that concoction.
But the invention of Stove Top, should you consider it that, didn’t occur until the 1970s. Even though I’m a Stove Top snob, it is beloved by many people. In fact, some 60 million boxes of the stuff is sold annually.
One serving of Kraft’s stuffing mix contains about 336 mg of sodium. The recommended daily sodium intake for an average adult is less than 2,300 mg (most Americans are far over that), so keep that in mind when you’re serving yourself up seconds, or thirds.
Crummy weather is headed our way, with rain showers in the evening forecast. During the day, it will be cloudy with temperatures in the low-to-mid-40s.
In the headlines…
There is no information about the fate of any of the nearly 240 people believed to be held hostage in Gaza. There has been no proof of life, no evidence that they are being fed or given medicine, no contact with the outside world.
Hamas is “close to reaching a truce agreement” with Israel, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said in a statement posted on Telegram. No additional details were provided.
Ophir Falk, foreign policy adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said that Israel’s firing into the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza was proportional and “in complete compliance with international law.”
The number of civilians killed in Gaza has been “unparalleled and unprecedented” in comparison to any conflict since 2017, when United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres took office, he said.
An updated analysis of satellite imagery shows that in the month and a half since Israel’s war in Gaza started, about half of all buildings in the northern Gaza Strip have been damaged or destroyed.
President Joe Biden celebrated his 81st birthday by joking repeatedly about his advanced age, even as the White House strongly defended his stamina and batted away polling — and one prominent Democrat — suggesting that the issue could cost him votes.
Biden mixed up Taylor Swift and Britney Spears in remarks during the White House’s annual turkey pardoning ceremony, which happened to fall on his 81st birthday.
He was in the midst of pardoning two turkeys, Liberty and Bell, when he mistakenly used the name Britney in an apparent reference to Swift’s current international tour.
Biden will continue a Thanksgiving family tradition this week in Massachusetts, eating his Thanksgiving turkey with family on Nantucket, as he has in years past.
Naomi Biden shared a touching moment with her grandfather, the president, at her wedding to husband Peter Neal last year.
Biden signed up for a Threads account yesterday, as did the White House, Vice President Kamala Harris, and the second gentleman, Douglas Emhoff.
A federal appeals court moved to drastically weaken the Voting Rights Act, issuing a ruling that would effectively bar private citizens and civil rights groups from filing lawsuits under a central provision of the landmark civil rights law.
Donald Trump, 77, released a glowing letter purporting to be from his personal physician crowing about his “excellent” health and claiming that he has lost an unspecified amount of weight.
Trump’s physician, Dr. Bruce Aronwald, wrote the single-page report over two months after the former president underwent a “comprehensive” health examination in September, the document says.
The Trump Organization’s longtime controller returned to the witness stand yesterday as a witness for the defense at Donald Trump’s financial fraud trial and continued to downplay his role in the fraudulent financial statements central to the case.
The former president shared a threat made in a social media post by a former top official in his administration, who wrote that people who “framed Trump … will pay.”
The three-judge panel of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals appears inclined to restore the limited gag order in Trump’s federal election subversion case, but may loosen some restrictions so he can more directly criticize special counsel Jack Smith.
In the Fulton County election subversion case, Trump’s attorneys are seeking access to some of the discovery material that special counsel Jack Smith may be holding in the federal case.
New York Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman apologized and said he misspoke when he called for Trump to be “eliminated” — which some on social media argued could incite violence against the 2024 Republican presidential front-runner.
The former president is focusing his most vicious attacks on domestic political opponents, setting off fresh worries among autocracy experts.
The Commission on Presidential Debates announced the dates and locations of three presidential debates to be held during the general election campaign next year, as well as one vice-presidential debate.
A bipartisan group of more than three dozen lawmakers called on Gov. Kathy Hochul to ban an inflammatory pro-Palestinian student group from New York college campuses that they say has spewed hate and endorsed violence.
Hochul’s $250,000 annual salary puts her far below the level of compensation that many other top state officials are paid, with medical professionals, college coaches and especially state troopers hauling in some of the biggest paychecks.
Hochul officially vetoed a bill that would have extended the life of the state limousine safety task force she assembled — while presenting the Legislature with what is called a program bill of new limo safety reforms.
A rule that allows the state Health Department to lawfully order someone to involuntarily isolate or quarantine to control a highly contagious disease, such as COVID-19, has been reinstated in a unanimous decision by a mid-level appellate court.
New Yorkers are continuing to show support for Israel, according to the latest Siena poll, although backing from self-identified liberals appear to be relatively more skeptical as the Democratic Party is continuing to fracture over the issue.
Hochul said she’s exploring ways to soften the steep budget cuts to the NYPD that the Adams administration announced last week, while at the same time vowing she won’t raise taxes.
“I’m talking to my budget team right now about how we can support the city because the city has to be safe and we’re working with the mayor to overcome these barriers,” the governor told reporters.
Hochul vowed to help pull New York City back from the edge of the fiscal abyss, but there’s one thing she won’t do to help the city close a $7 billion budget gap: raise taxes.
Adams will spare the NYPD, the FDNY and the Sanitation Department from another round of budget cuts — but is ordering his administration to figure out a way to slash $2.1 billion in projected spending on housing and services for newly-arrived migrants.
Adams ordered a dramatic 20% slash in spending on migrants intended to bring down daily costs as well as the number of days that asylum-seekers spend in city shelters.
City Hall staffer Rana Abbasova reportedly tipped off colleagues to “delete” their text exchanges hours after the feds raided her New Jersey home, according to a source close to the investigation into Adams’ campaign.
A high-end Manhattan sushi restaurant opened by mega-developer SL Green, one of Adams’ biggest financial backers, landed on a high-priority Deputy Mayor of Operations list of locations eligible for fast-track FDNY inspections needed to open for business.
The NYPD is set to fully encrypt its radio broadcasts by the end of next year as part of a nearly $400 million planned system upgrade — setting off alarm among local politicians and press advocates.
State Sen. Michael Gianaris outlined a bill to preserve the news media’s access to police radio communications, as the NYPD defended its controversial $500 million plan to upgrade and encrypt its radio frequencies.
Before nearly 100 random attacks in New York City, the mentally ill homeless people who committed them were failed by a system that keeps making the same errors.
An aspiring photographer claims she was sexually assaulted by then-New York City mayoral candidate Michael Bloomberg’s top media strategist at the billionaire businessman’s campaign headquarters during his 2001 run for local office.
Parents whose kids were killed by drunk or drugged-up drivers joined Long Island law enforcement to push for a state law that would allow cops to crack down on dangerous, impaired motorists.
For the second time in seven years, an Albany County judge sentenced Jaushi’ir Weaver to 22 years to life in prison for the drive-by shooting and murder of bystander Courtney Yates in 2015.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
