Thanksgiving

Check out our 2008 Thanksgiving Guide for a sampling of our favorite DIY Thanksgiving recipes and treats!

Full Thanksgiving contest details here.

For most, Thanksgiving might stir peaceful images of families sitting down to a meal and feeling content, maybe even a little sleepy. Not here! Around my family and friends, Thanksgiving has become another venue for outright competition as we struggle to make the biggest, tastiest, most outrageous creations we can, and then further compete about how they were made or consumed.

Whose turkey is the most heirloom, organic, and local? Whose pumpkin pie is the richest? Who can eat the most Thanksgiving dinner? (Two years ago, I ate 7 lbs and Saul beat me with 10 lbs that he claims he still hasn't lost!)

So, for this Thanksgiving, to help celebrate a cornucopia stuffed way beyond its limit and literally exploding with excess, Instructables is holding a Take Thanksgiving to the Next Level contest. Anything and everything Thanksgiving related is eligible and great documentation counts just as much as great concepts. Some ways you could take Thanksgiving to the next level:

• Triple-decker pumpkin pie, topped by a double-decker pecan pie, with homemade icecream on top.
• How, where, and why you found a specific breed of turkey that is raised only by one farm, fed only organic grubs, and sung lullabies every evening before it went to sleep. Or, how to hunt a turkey -- whichever, really.
• Thanksgiving games, particularly unruly, rowdy ones, or games that lead to even more excess, like "increase in body-fat during Thanksgiving dinner" competitions.
• Unique recipes, especially secret family recipes, or recipes not usually considered part of Thanksgiving. What better way to bring more excess than to increase the potential list of things to make?
• Elaborate, solar-powered, blinking LED, DIY Thanksgiving centerpieces.
• Standard recipes documented so lovingly, beautifully, exactingly that they raise the bar for the already awesome recipe keyword. Use macro-mode pictures when appropriate!

Need some inspiration? turkey tek's Thanksgivings sound about perfect to me with a recirculating gravy fountain, giant pies, and liquid nitrogen ice cream. Chicken Salad and Salmon Tartare Coronets set the bar for documentation; see if you can meet or exceed that level.