Thanksgiving may not be as exciting this year. But with this collaborative feast, your recipes can be. BY DEBBIE MATTHEWS food@indyweek.com
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n 2018, when the INDY came up with the idea of a virtual holiday potluck, we thought it would be a peek into the private family traditions of well-known North Carolinians from different cultures, religions, and stages in life. And it was. We learned that no holiday at the North Carolina Executive Mansion is complete without First Lady Kristin Cooper’s ridiculously delicious pineapple fluff pie. We found that Raleigh Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin likes her shrimp spicy, Duke football coach David Cutcliffe likes his deviled eggs dyed blue, and WRAL’s Ken Smith is always good for a Caribbean recipe from his Virgin Island home. We also discovered that the most fashionable man on the guest list, designer Alexander Julian, loves pig in its humblest iterations—country ham and pit-cooked Eastern-style barbecue. We also thought the virtual nature of the potluck was a cute little gimmick that wasn’t just one more scheduled event during the holidays for busy people. Instead of a multi-part, many-houred obligation, our invitees were given weeks to come up with a recipe and a little bit of its history. Then, one day, we all awoke to 2020. Life became a surreal daze of masks, hand sanitizer, and Zoom. We learned terms like “disease mitigation” and “PPE,” and how to tell the difference between N95s and surgical masks. The concepts of social distancing and aloneness were the most ubiquitous—and, social animals that we are, the most difficult to adapt to. For many of us, social media became our lives, and the virtual our reality. But after three years of probing North Carolina’s good and great, we’ve learned one immutable fact: Holiday foods are about indulgence, tradition, and comfort. And no matter how well-known or powerful the person sitting at the table is, the ultimate indulgence and maximum comfort come from the foods we ate during those celebrations when we were children. 2020 is the harshest of mistresses, a 100year year when every day brings fresh, unexpected hell. This year, this annus horribilis, we need all the comfort we can lay our frequently washed hands on. 22
November 25, 2020
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