by Dan Macey

We are rethinking our traditional Thanksgiving this year, or at least the version where I scour the garage for folding chairs to squeeze a nephew’s plus one around a huge table with Tom Turkey and all the fixings. This reconsideration is after decades of hosting Thanksgivings and actually enjoying selecting which plates to use for the pumpkin pie and finding a bucket big enough to hold a brining turkey.

This year, this boomer will be joining the younger set and celebrating Friendsgiving. For one, this new celebration will relieve my family of having to travel hours or feel guilty about not doing the dishes that pile up in the sink after the big meal. On Thanksgiving Thursday, I can simply relax with my spouse and cuddle with my dogs while watching football and the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade without any pressure to keep the turkey from drying out.

Friendsgiving was officially added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary in 2020 and has come to simply mean celebrating Thanksgiving with friends. This is sometimes in addition to celebrating the Thursday holiday or instead of the traditional celebration.

Like most of the over 20 percent of Americans, I will be celebrating my Friendsgiving on the Saturday following Thanksgiving Thursday. According to the dictionary, the term Friendsgiving dates to a tweet in 2007 and was inspired by the hit show “Friends.” And there was an advertising campaign in 2011 for Baileys Irish Cream liqueur that used the word.

There are even several Friendsgiving cookbooks. “Each member of your chosen family brings something unique to the table, and together you blend to create the perfect vibe,” says Taylor Vance, author of “The Friendsgiving Cookbook.” “Your collective energy is the product of laughter, inside jokes, awkward moments, delicate dynamics, and incredible moments.”

Friendsgiving is now considered “a seasonal staple” with 40 percent of Gen Z and millennials now celebrating with friends, according to the Bethesda, Maryland–based Collage Group, a company that advises consumer brands on trends.

My Friendsgiving will take place at a friend’s house near Reading, Pennsylvania, and will include fellow baby boomers, millennials and even a couple of teenage Gen Zs. And turkey will not be on the menu. Instead, I will probably make an easy-to-prepare but very impressive Crown Roast of Lamb (see recipe below). I contributed the recipe to “The Gilded Age Cookbook” by Becky Diamond who said, “this is an eye-appealing showstopper that will have guests cheering when brought to the table.”

“Friendsgiving, free of socially imposed rules, offers the perfect opportunity to try out new and exciting flavors, experiment with recipes, or to share one’s culture through food,” the consulting company added.

Our friends’ group is staying away from holiday staples and opting for more exotic and flavor-centric recipes. We are also big on serving plenty of nibbles and bites. And ours, like most other Friendsgiving gatherings, will be a potluck, lessening the burden on the host. Then, after the food, we are going to play a game – probably Ex Libris, where players write fake, but plausible, openings or closing sentences of novels to fool fellow players into believing their prose is the authentic line.

My sister will readily admit that Thanksgiving is her least favorite holiday. Like so many, she finds the meal planning, food shopping, family-wrangling and table setting way too much work for “five minutes of eating – followed by hours of washing dishes.” And besides, she doesn’t even like turkey. She is opting for a meal with her newlywed son and daughter-in-law as they host their first holiday meal, where Chicken Parmesan will be the centerpiece.

But just who should you invite to your Friendsgiving? According to Vance, “the ones you took turns nudging awake in school. The ones who’ve spent many movie nights and evenings binging TV shows on the couch. The ones you call at all hours of the day just so they don’t have to spend the 10-minute drive alone. The ones who are bad influences and supply you with sugar, butter and alcohol – or are extremely bad for your bank account and have shown you your all-time favorite restaurants.”

My friends enjoy cooking and sharing their love of food with the ones they love. It doesn’t hurt that they all are good cooks, but when good friends gather it’s the laughter and gratitude, not the food, that matters most.

Make your Friendsgiving unforgettable with this (trust me, easy to prepare) showstopper:

Crown Roast of Lamb

Reprinted with permission from “The Gilded Age Cookbook,” by Becky Diamond, published by Globe Pequot

Ingredients

¼ cup chopped, fresh rosemary

2 teaspoons chopped, fresh thyme

2 tablespoons chopped, fresh oregano

6 garlic cloves, minced

1 tablespoon salt

2 teaspoon pepper

1 (4-5 pound) crown roast of lamb or 2 (2-pound) racks (see note below)

Olive oil

Instructions

Preheat oven to 425 degrees

Combine rosemary, thyme, oregano, garlic, salt, pepper in a small bowl.

Place crown roast on a wire cooling rack placed on top of a baking sheet. Rub olive oil all over the roast, both inside and outside, then rub the herb mixture all over the lamb. Cover the bones loosely with a sheet of aluminum foil.

Place roast in the oven on the lower rack and cook until a thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the lamb registers 125–130 degrees, about 20–30 minutes. Transfer the lamb to a serving plate and let stand for 5–10 minutes before bringing it to the table to carve. Serve with mint jelly or chopped mint combined with some olive oil.

Note: It is easiest to preorder the crown roast of lamb, which is two racks of lamb tied together with twine and trimmed so it will form into a circle. Generally, a butcher or even the meat department at your local grocer will have a crown roast of lamb available, especially during the holidays. You can make the crown roast yourself by trussing two 7–9 ribs racks together and cutting one-third of the way through the flesh of each bone.