Better than Thanksgiving? T.G. Plus One.

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If a half-eaten drumstick is your thing, consider the after-Thanksgiving. Not officially recognized, the Friday leftovers dinner following the big day should be honored. It is a delicious meal, without the bother.

I enjoy the after-Thanksgiving meal more than the official day. The stuffing is crisp and crunchy all around, the gravy requires just a quick zap, and the sweet potato pie has all the marshmallows smushed into the potatoes. Sometimes we use paper plates. Always, we put the wine bottles right on the table.

I recall in detail the menu from one particularly fine Thanksgiving. The meal was, if I do say so myself, exceptional; part of the after-Thanksgiving joy is simply the post-prandial reverie, and I’m still indulging in it, years later. About 4:40 on Thanksgiving Day that year, we started with shrimp cocktail, spanakopita, and marinated vegetables for hors d’oeuvres, followed by turkey, sweet potatoes, vegetarian lasagna, applesauce and cranberries, cornbread stuffing, gravy, roasted winter vegetables, and my piece de resistance, a marinated roasted loin of pork. For dessert we served ice cream cake, pumpkin pie, chocolate lava cake, fresh fruit, homemade chocolate chip cookies and mandel brodt. We numbered 25, and we did a pretty good job on the food, but there was still plenty left for the after-Thanksgiving on Friday.

For Friday’s meal that year, we lost four original guests. (They were friends of friends, with delicate appetites, and clearly were not up for the Thanksgiving culinary excess.) We acquired four new guests, all of whom were young men in their 20s. I ordered a pizza and eggplant parmigiana, just in case. We demolished the pork loin, made serious inroads with the turkey, finished the stuffing, ate all the eggplant and froze the pizza. The desserts went poof.

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