After weeks of planning and discussions, Thanksgiving 2020 was here and now is gone, with only a fridge full of leftovers to commemorate its passing. Overall, things went smoothly and I ended up with a good looking plate:

I also succeeded in my “induce food comas” mission, with my sous chef Scotty being the first casualty of the ham and turkey mortars lobbed into his gut:

While I still have plenty of room for improvement - dough is hard, y’all - I did make one fortuitous discovery, which was an updated hot cocoa recipe:

I had a Peppermint Mocha from Starbucks earlier in the week and I was curious to what extent I could recreate the drink with alcohol. So, I took hot chocolate, peppermint schnapps, and Kahlua and experimented with different ratios throughout the day. I think I arrived at the best version, which is

• 3 parts hot chocolate
• 1 part peppermint schnapps
• 1 part Kahlua
• Marshmallows for topping

Depending on your mint/coffee tastes, you can adjust the ratios accordingly. I ended up favoring more Kahlua than expected - the coffee bitterness is a nice contrast to the cocoa’s sweetness.

Macy’s 2020 Thanksgiving Parade

While I started cooking several hours before the Macy’s 2020 Thanksgiving Parade began, I was pleased when it came on. Overall, it fit the mold of what a Thanksgiving parade broadcast should be, even if it were completely artificial and largely the work of film editors:

If you didn’t know any better, you’d have to be actively seeking to escape the fictitious bubble and look for signs that this was the product of several days worth of filming and editing (the lack of onlookers was the biggest giveaway).

If you’d like, you can watch the parade, with some behind the scenes footage from Verizon:

Overall, this broadcast filled the gap left in my Thanksgiving morning by Chicago’s cancelled parade this year.

The only complaint that I had about the production was that there was a tendency to cut to commercials in the middle of several song and dance numbers. In a normal year, I would understand this - you have to keep the parade moving - but in a year when this is largely an edited artificial construct, you’d think that the editors could have planned better.

That said, the Hamilton appearance was solid and not interrupted:

I was also pleased to see that our COVID benefactress’s performance wasn’t preempted either:

Cooking went slightly past the parade broadcast time on account of me waiting too long to form the dinner rolls and let them rise before baking. Due to a football game being cancelled, we got to watch some of the 2020 National Dog Show instead:

Not a bad way to spend the day cooking.

After the day’s cooking was finished, I was pretty beat and I followed my sous chef into Thanksgiving Nap Land while watching a Thanksgiving episode marathon of Friends. Not a bad way at all to spend the day, CMDRs.