Nothing brings a family together like ...
2020 made a lot of people rethink Thanksgiving. There is no shortage of human interest stories on the internet of people who felt overwhelmed by the family or financial obligations of the holiday who used the pandemic as a much-needed opportunity to take a breather and rethink the holiday. This article isn't about that. Instead, we want to present you with a humble idea:
Pizza for Thanksgiving.
That might sound like a joke, but hear us out. There are a couple of reasons that this party favorite is the perfect centerpiece for your Thanksgiving dinner this year. Starting with:
It Doesn't Matter How Many People Attend
Figuring out the optimal amount of Thanksgiving food to prepare is a complex, exhausting process. No matter how much you prepare by doing the food math, it seems like it's always a 50/50 tossup between having too little food and having enough leftovers to last you until next Labor Day. How much stuffing is TOO MUCH stuffing? At what point should you get a second turkey? Do you have enough extra gravy on hand in case that one weird uncle chugs an entire gravy boat of it again?
When you get pizza, you don't have to worry about these problems. It doesn't matter whether you use a fancy pizza calculator to figure out that golden ratio or just guess—it's easy to make sure you have enough for everyone. Besides, you don't have to worry as much about ordering too much because pizza leftovers are the best kind of leftovers.
Pizza Can Be Fancy Too
Let's clarify. When we say "Do pizza for Thanksgiving", we're suggesting you "do Domino's takeout for Thanksgiving." It's still an event after all, and that means you want to order the fancy stuff. Like, the premium toppings stuff. The wood-fired stuff. The Smokin' Oak Wood-Fired Pizza stuff, even.
You're not about to "wow" any family members by serving a couple of room-temperature $4 XL cheese pizzas, but thankfully, it's not hard to do better than that. Thanksgiving is a time of celebrating good company with good food, and that means ordering toppings like prosciutto, bleu cheese, and chorizo. You've got plenty of options, especially when you consider ...
There Are a Million Different Ways To Do Pizza
As we just noted, picking pizza as your next Thanksgiving centerpiece doesn't mean just ordering some cheap party starter packs and calling it good. Rather, it offers a surprising amount of opportunity to be mindful about what kind of food you're serving, and how you'll enjoy it as a group!
Want to rally the entire family around a single signature pie? Grab an XXXL deep dish and put it in the center of the table. Meanwhile, if your family would enjoy the, ahem, diplomacy of ordering individual pizzas, then it's pretty straightforward to collect orders ahead of time and get everyone an individual one!
Of course, that's not even getting into the world of DESSERT PIZZA, which is the objectively best way possible to end a Thanksgiving dinner. Period.
Switching to pizza means making a few compromises, however. After all, when was the last time you saw roasted turkey available as a pizza topping? While it might mean missing out on a few "traditional" Thanksgiving foods, you won't find any of us complaining.
At the end of the day, pizza is a great metaphor for Thanksgiving too. After all, it's a bunch of simple ingredients that come together to create something beautiful, something that's more than the sum of all its parts. If that isn't a thematically delicious choice to make this year, we don't know what is.
