Happy Thanksgiving! Serve Some Spaghetti Carbonara
Let Calvin Trillin read you his Thanksgiving-famous campaign against turkey
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In 1981, Calvin Trillin proposed a campaign: He was trying to change the national Thanksgiving dish from turkey to spaghetti carbonara.
“It does not require much historical research to uncover the fact that nobody knows if the Pilgrims really ate turkey at the first Thanksgiving dinner,” he writes. “The only thing we know for sure about what the Pilgrims ate is that it couldn’t have tasted very good.”
In honor of his essay—referenced nearly every year around this time—and the holiday in question, he offered to read Spaghetti Carbonara Day for an episode of our podcast, Burnt Toast:
Play the episode above, find it on iTunes, or listen to it using your favorite podcatcher.
Listen while you cook—or travel— today, and blame Calvin if you make a detour to the grocery store for spaghetti.
This article originally appeared in November of 2015—we're running it again today because, well, it's Thanksgiving!