My most memorable New York Thanksgiving was the first one I had after moving to the city only a few months prior. This was four years ago, when I had just turned eighteen. My best friend from high school and I were all alone, but together, living in a run-down basement apartment. We decided that even though all of our family members were thousands of miles away in Texas we could still make a special Thanksgiving meal with our own two hands. So we spent all day making every possible dish. There was mashed potatoes, cornbread, cranberry sauce (made from fresh cranberries), stuffing, green beans, pie… although, we both realized that we were absolutely terrified of roasting an actual whole turkey by ourselves. This is the kind of task my Dad always devotedly undertook, and is a typical responsibility of the parent in the household. Not to let our shaky new independence get the best of us, we devised a brilliant, and very “New York” plan for including a roast bird in our Thanksgiving feast. We walked down to our local Chinese restaurant and bought a roast duck as it innocently hung in the window, aglow with the iconic neon lights. As we filled our feeble table with the fruits of our labor and festooned it with strings of fall foliage a deep satisfaction and feeling of steady transition came over us.
