Thanksgiving, deconstructed

  Is this what your Thanksgiving looked like? Probably not. Our Thanksgiving dinners aren't traditional anymore.
 This year we had a Spanish themed dinner and our menu was made up of recipes like- Ensalada mixta (Spanish mixed green salad), Catalan spinach, green beans with Marcona almonds, sliced ham and paella. Yup, it took me three grocery stores to pull these ingredients together and Central Market was the winner for having the most obscure, impossible to find items. 
  Paella  is a seafood dish, cooked over an open flame (husband loves doing that) with rice, peas and spices I didn't ask about. There are thousands of variations of the recipe including a black paella that features squid ink (No- thank you). We had a pretty generic version. 
  Last year was Italian. Turkey meatball soup, pumpkin lasagna. Cranberry bellinis. The goal is to take apart some of the core items of Thanksgiving and put them back together in a different theme. Not everyone agrees with this. I've seen the eye-rolling. I don't care. 
  I'm not ready.
  For whatever reason, I associate Thanksgiving with my dad. He's no longer here. We had the same menu each year, he sat at the same spot each year....you see where I am going? 
  Not ready. 
  So, I reinvented Thanksgiving. One year, I did fried chicken (close enough to turkey, right?) on sweet potato waffles. I'd never fried chicken before but I did research and trials and... it worked. And I got through another year. 
  I don't know if my table will ever see a traditional Thanksgiving again. I'm giving myself time...and apparently... it's taking a long time. 
  But meanwhile, I had a wonderful dinner. My family came home, my friends came over, we cooked new recipes and laughed a lot. I couldn't have asked for a better day. It's a lot to be thankful for. ​