Thanksgiving at Cracker Barrel

“But as I watched people come and go—the big family with rambunctious kids, the college-age goth couple, the woman with a newborn trying to explain the menu to her Korean-speaking mother—it struck me that there are plenty of people who don't care about the craft of the meal, who don't spend the weeks before Thanksgiving embroiled in heated arguments over whether or not to brine their turkey, or whether to mash potatoes or run them through a ricer. There are people who wake up on the fourth Thursday in November and want a slice of turkey with gravy and cranberry sauce and stuffing, and sides of mashed potatoes and green beans, and pumpkin pie at the end, and they want it because that's what you're supposed to want on Thanksgiving, and they don't care if it comes from a home kitchen. Even if you can afford to buy a turkey, even if you have the time to cook and are healthy enough to do so, even if you have a family large enough to eat all the leftovers, making a Thanksgiving dinner is still seriously a pain. Of course people are eating Thanksgiving at Cracker Barrel! Why wouldn't they? Why wouldn't everyone?”

http://www.eater.com/2014/11/19/7241421/life-in-chains-cracker-barrel-thanksgiving

Link at maggiesfarm.

(There were relatives I did not like, cousins who took after their cowardly, bullying almost illiterate parents, cousins to whom a book was something put under a table leg to keep the table level. Real maroons, as Bugs Bunny would say. But Thanksgiving at my father’s parents’ house – the food, the food.)