John and I spent the 2020 Thanksgiving holiday in an unusually quiet fashion last year due to COVID-19. I still cooked the full dinner, because to me the Thanksgiving meal is about sharing love & gratitude, and I wasn’t going to let the coronavirus get in the way of that. We pivoted from our usual celebration and made doorstep deliveries of all the bountiful fixings. There were a few tears, a multitude of air hugs and kisses blown from a distance, and then we made our way back home on eerily quiet highways to a dining table set for two, instead of 20. This year we will be wading gently back into the hosting pool. We are having a small gathering and we’ll be taking safety precautions, because as we know, the pandemic is not over yet.

I’ve got many tried and true Thanksgiving recipes in my file, dishes that have made their expected appearance on the table, year after year. 2021 seems like a marvelous time to set the stage for the addition of some fresh arrivals. I’ve been writing and testing a few “new to me” dishes this week and will be sharing some of them in the upcoming days. The first of these is Delicata squash with maple syrup and bacon served on a bed of arugula and topped with herbed goat cheese. Read on for the recipe.