A smaller Thanksgiving for sure. That seems okay to me. Too many relatives was never okay. It wasn’t a bad time, but I never loved thanksgiving food. I remember turkey and cigarettes and sambuca. Not terrible. I also remember the stuffed artichokes and braised fennel my grandmother made to Italianize the day. Aside from those lovely dishes, all the mushy stuff, mashed sweet potatoes, stuffing, mashed potatoes, I could do without. What I love is to pull a piece of crusty leg skin off the turkey, wrap it around some broccoli rabe, and then pour on some gravy. This was good, way better than the dried out breast meat that seemed so dreary.
I also love to make marinated olives, something my Nanny always offered, along with raw fennel and celery ( very Puglian).
So all you really need to do here is buy good olives. I used cerignolo green and Moroccan black. A nice mix, I think. Then I sprinkled the olives with fresh chopped rosemary, fennel pollen (or fennel seed), a few crushed garlic cloves (make sure they’re fresh), and coarse ground black pepper. I also added the chopped fronds from a fennel bulb. If you don’t have this, you can use parsley or a little chervil or even a bit of tarragon, but not too much.
Happy thanksgiving to all my friends. It’s a weird one, but we’ll all pull through.
xx
Erica De Mane 
Could not agree more about everything you wrote here, E. Except Carmella didn’t make gravy, nor mashed potatoes, yeah, the sweet potatoes for my Dad. Love your idea about the crispy skin-wrapped broccoli rabe, though. YUM! I would have just eaten it out of hand. Fennel and rapini not available in Cedarburg. Had to go into Milwaukee to Glorioso’s at Christmastime. Love ❤️ be your olive marinade. Btw, I made grissini with the wild fennel seeds and pepper. Whoa! Had to back off on the amount in next batch. Fantastic though.
Happy Weird Thanksgiving a tutti la famiglia! Amoré. Sempre. 💁🏻🇮🇹❤️🍁🍂😻🦃
Sandra, I actually made a turkey I enjoyed this year. I dry brined it and miraculously didn’t over cook it. I only eat the dark meat, but even the breast wasn’t dried out. I hope you had a good holiday.