Set yourself free from a traditional Thanksgiving spread: Host a meatball party, crank the Italian crooners, stock up on olive oil. Let your freak red- and white-checked tablecloth fly.
If at least one of the following things describes you, this menu is for you.
You work in the food industry, and it’s plausible that you’ve already cooked and consumed 3 hulking turkeys, your weight in stuffing, and enough potatoes to feed the citizens of a small town before the month of November actually began.
You don’t have your great aunt’s jello salad requirements to contend with, or a cousin who can never not bring mashed parsnips, or a mother who says she wants to "get creative" but you both know that really means pulling down the patterned gravy boat instead of last year’s cream one (YAWN!).
You like meatballs. You really, really like meatballs.
Turducken who? Your culinary white whale is a timpano.
Every year, immediately after you put in your order for a bird on holiday autopilot, you screech-yell-exclaim in your head that turkey isn’t even that good and why couldn’t this tradition have been started with rib-eye or meatloaf or practically anything else and god I’d take anything else as long as it won't dry up like shoe leather almost reflexively. You stuff those thoughts deep down inside yourself, much like you will soon stuff that dry bird, and you look for this year’s ultimate best amazing brine. That will do it, you think.
You pray at the altar of olive oil.
You often find yourself saying things like this would be soo good with breadcrumbs in it or can you pass the bread or I don’t understand why every salad doesn’t have croutons? (Apologies to Allen Miglore: Your salad is sacred, but not too sacred to add croutons to.)
Sometimes when you’re making Italian food you, you go all Giada and explain—to the air, to the kitchen, to no one—that you’re now placing the RIGOT into the SPAGHETT and you’re going to grate in a little PARMEHSAAN for that salty bite. Wouldn’t this be just so good with PROSCIUTT??
I have a thing for most foods topped with a fried egg, a strange disdain for overly soupy tomato sauce, and I can never make it home without ripping off the end of a newly-bought baguette. I like spoons very much.
When you say, "...saucy Italian feast instead" It's no the neighborhood my Italian friends and relatives lived in. We always did both as part of the Thanksgiving tradition. Starting with antipasto, salad and soup, the the "Saucy" part of the feast with pasta and several types of meat, then moving on to the turkey and all it's fixings, dessert, the fruits, cheeses and nuts.... the recipes in the article, however, are terrific and I've used several from your site in the past... Happy Thanksgiving.
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