Turkey for Halloween?

To prepare for Halloween, Khalil spends the week cooking for...Thanksgiving?

By Khalil Hymore

Lately I feel like I am living in a time warp, where you are forced to experience holidays out of sync with everyone else. What am I talking about, you ask? Well, it's the job really. You see magazines, and even WEtv.com, work so far in advance that even though Halloween is days away, I am living in a world of Thanksgiving recipes. Not to mention an Easter haze at the magazine, where I'm freelancing.

Do you realize that by the time Thanksgiving actually arrives, I will have celebrated it three times this year! I mean I spent half my summer developing and testing turkey recipes for magazines and now I am doing it again for WEtv.com! Whew! Not to mention I experienced Christmas in August, Valentine's Day in September, and now Easter in October. I feel as though I'm going mad.

After an especially stressful day at the magazine, where I have had chocolate bunnies on the brain, I find myself startled by the fact that pumpkins line every street corner in New York City. I can barely even write the date most of the time without consulting a calendar first. It's exhausting. Such is the life of a recipe developer/writer!

One saving grace is that all the Thanksgiving magazines are hitting the newsstands. Gourmet has the most gorgeous turkey on the cover this month, a great spread on Thanksgiving dinner in 4 hours, and an interesting post by Laura Shapiro, titled "Fear Cuisine" (aka depression food--how apropos!). Bon Appetit's cover also promises "Thanksgiving Made Easy," while the BA Foodist contemplates Thanksgiving sans turkey. Oh, I get it! With no turkey, Thanksgiving prep does get a whole lot easier. Martha Stewart Living and Saveur have not arrived yet, but no doubt when they do, I'm pretty sure two more turkeys will be staring back at me from the covers.

Anyway, I spent most of the weekend working on my Thanksgiving recipes for WEtv.com, as did my sister, who is developing cocktail recipes for the Web site. I have to say, I am quite proud of us. The recipes are delicious and we made sure to collaborate on ingredients so that our recipes complement each other--kind of like us! The hands-down favorite around the apartment has been my Ginger-Pumpkin Pie, made with lots and lots of freshly grated ginger and crushed ginger snap cookies.

Even though I have Thanksgiving on the brain, Halloween is not far from my mind. I have been thinking a lot about the Halloweens of my youth--trick-or-treating with my best friend Adam and then coming home and trading (or conning if you ask my sister) candy with Ashley. To this day, my favorite Halloween candy is still candy corn--or better yet those mini-pumpkin shaped candies that taste like candy corn. I have to admit, although I looked forward to it, Halloween was never really my holiday. I think it has to do with my mom making much better costumes for my sister than me. Like the year she got to be a rock star, but I had to be Pinocchio.

Anyway, I have to get back to my Thanksgiving planning, while the rest of the world gets dressed up and collects candy. But stay tuned, because I think you'll all love the upcoming collaborations with my sister.....even if she always had the better costume!