Peter Murray ’29
Updated 11:50 a.m. EDT, 21 November 2025
Picture this: a trolley, out of control, is hurdling down the tracks. In its path of destruction lies a turkey, beside it a heaping bowl of mashed potatoes surrounded by stuffing and dinner rolls. You stand close by, hand on a lever able to divert the trolley’s course down a sidetrack. But alas, the sidetrack is far from empty. Strewn across it is the cranberry sauce, a sweet potato casserole, the gravy boat, and a whole host of pies. Torn between two terrible outcomes, your mind races to decide the fate of these foods.
Or perhaps your mind is already made up. When presented with these two groups, you see no real choice as there is a clear winner in your eyes. As always, the Thanksgiving favorites are a topic of great debate, however, once and for all, I will end this discussion. My ranking of the classic Thanksgiving foods stands as the authoritative Word of Peter™, so without excessive, spurious, or obsequious ado, let’s begin with perhaps the quintessential Thanksgiving food.
TURKEY. First off, eating carved turkey on any day other than Thanksgiving is like carving jack-o-lanterns on Memorial Day. Sure, you could do it, but you might get weird looks. Just like Christmas music, turkey is good when it is consumed in its proper season. However, an important distinction must be made between what truly constitutes good turkey. If you prefer white meat to dark, I recommend saving yourself some money and marinating a stack of sandpaper for your next Thanksgiving.
MASHED POTATOES. While there are many ways to prepare a potato, there is only one right way to serve it. A good batch of mashed potatoes is like a poorly written essay. You skin off all the outsides of the quotes, boil the substance out of blocks of literature, smash it all into a heaping mound of text, swirl in creamy globs of tangents and sidetracks, and sprinkle a dusting of clichés across the top. And the results? Delicious.
STUFFING. Before any proper praise of the humble stuffing is rendered, it must be said that, much like when a paper is compared to one generated with AI, the artificial one proves superior. It isn’t stuffing if it wasn’t cooked up in a laboratory, dehydrated, shipped, and stacked by employees on the shelves of whatever corporate food conglomerate holds sway over your hometown. If your great aunt Janice insists that you try her homemade stuffing, it may be polite to suffer a mouthful. Still, once your time of tribulation has passed, you’ll undoubtedly return to the milk and honey of artificial stuffing.
SWEET POTATO CASSEROLE. Imagine you are on the JV basketball team, absolutely destroying all those freshmen with your towering 5’7 frame. But then, when you go up to varsity, you are suddenly relegated to head benchwarmer. If you felt that letdown, then congratulations, you’ve just empathized with sweet potato casserole.
The casserole can’t be blamed for the way it is, but it’s too sweet to fit in with the savory foods, and too healthy to stand with the desserts. And since any food so entrenched in inherent deception must be shunned, sweet potato casserole will remain forever anathema, treated like the church of Laodicea in the book of Revelation.
To the great regret of all, there remains no time now to share the truth about other Thanksgiving foods. So, while at least for now, cranberry sauce, gravy, pies, and more must go unheard, think not of what could have been. No matter what, enjoy what’s here! ★
