My least favorite thing about Thanksgiving, and there’s not much to dislike about it, is the way food writers prostitute the convention of conventional Thanksgiving dinners by trying to reinvent it every year. As Regina Schrambling writes:

Every fall, writers and editors have to knock themselves out to come up with a gimmick—fast turkey, slow turkey, brined turkey, unbrined turkey—when the meal essentially has to stay the same.

And finally, she admits it: she does not follow all her own weird recipe innovations for alternative ways to use cranberry sauce, for Chinese sausage in rice dressing, for anything new. She admits, in short, that she is a hypocrite.

I make my stuffing as usual, roast my turkey as always, whisk up the same pan gravy, peel and mash potatoes, don’t get fancy with the cranberry sauce, and cook whatever green vegetable looks best at the farmers’ market. If I have time this year I’ll make pumpkin-thyme dinner rolls and the sweet potato-pecan pie I have baked 20 times before. It’s amazing how efficient you can be without new recipes.

Thankfully.