A Very (Very!) Bon Appétit Thanksgiving

As you may have noticed, every now and again—usually about once a month—we put out a magazine filled with recipes. Why do we do this? Call us crazy, but it's always been our hope that readers cook the recipes.

Turns out, they do. And in San Francisco, one family has gone above and beyond the call of duty. Last year, Ericka Olson's Thanksgiving dinner was composed entirely of dishes from *Bon Appétit'*s November 2012 issue. "It could be anything in those pages—not just the recipes but even ads," Olson said.

For 17 years, Ericka has hosted a Thanksgiving dinner based on a different theme; guests bring a dish that falls under that year's rubric. "It usually centers on some sort of cuisine—Italian, Greek, Spanish, Cajun, soul food," she said. "There are people who have been coming for more than 15 years, and a bunch of us get Bon Appétit. I was looking through it last year and I thought, This is it—this is the theme."

Ericka, her family, and her friends—she usually hosts around 25 for Thanksgiving, and everyone brings a plate—set out to recreate the BA spread. "There’s a little bit of a competition to it—people want to make something that’s really good. We tried to make things as true as we could keep them to the articles," she said. "My brother, who lives on his boat and doesn’t cook 364 days out of the year, took the brown butter apple tart—it looked exactly like the one in the magazine. He’s really good at following a recipe; the more instructions you give him, the better it turns out."

Her daughter, Noa Olson, came from New York and made the braised brisket from the RSVP section; the centerpiece was the herb-roasted turkey. Other standouts included cranberry hand pies ("so delicious"), scalloped potatoes with caramelized fennel, Grandma's pumpkin pie, sweet potatoes with bourbon and maple, the Does a Bear...? cocktail, spinach puffs, shrimp saganaki, doughnuts (in homage to Philadelphia's Federal Donuts, featured in that issue), celery root purée with toasted hazelnuts, and the pecan and chocolate tart with bourbon whipped crème fraîche.

And now, to toot our own horn: "As far as the taste of the food goes, it was one of the best Thanksgivings we’ve done—all the recipes were really amazing," Olson said. "Thanksgiving is really the ultimate holiday for us—we treat it like other people treat Christmas." Other themes she's tried over the years? "One year the theme was 'stuffed': everything had to be stuffed in something else. We did a Turducken. The year before last, the theme was Middle Ages—I was entering middle age, so we all made recipes from the Middle Ages. But it’s not normally kitschy like that, because we’re super into food. The first theme ever was Mexican. The mole took days to make. And it’s rolled back around—this year we’re doing Mexican again."

Oh really, Ms. Olson? Might we suggest you this year's Chile-Rubbed Turkey? (And the Turkey Torta if you have leftovers?)