The Thanksgiving Dressing

Wed, 04 Nov 2026 06:00:00 -0600

There’s a moment at Thanksgiving, right before the dressing comes out of the oven, when the whole house smells like it. Not like turkey, though the turkey’s been in there for hours. The dressing has its own smell: butter and onion going soft together, sage carrying over everything, the particular warmth of wet bread giving up its moisture to heat. If you grew up in a house where someone made dressing the same way every year, you know exactly what I’m talking about. Your nose knows it before the oven door opens.

The Long Table: Vegetable Beef Soup, October

Thu, 08 Oct 2026 06:00:00 -0500

October has a smell to it in Yellow Springs, the particular combination of fallen leaves and dry cold and wood smoke from someone’s fireplace two blocks over that starts around the first week and settles in. I notice it every year the way you notice the first of anything, even when it’s not actually new, and every year it means the same thing: time to get out the soup pot.

Food on Sunday Evening Review

The Thanksgiving Dressing

The Long Table: Vegetable Beef Soup, October