“Cook a Wolf” This Thanksgiving

Dear Listeners,

Thanksgiving dinner …. the pressure is real. Whether you’re cooking up a feast or simply want to wow with your potluck contribution, we’re featuring a “lost lady” this month who can help you navigate the dangerous gauntlet of a ravenous Turkey Day crowd.

In her 1942 wartime classic How to Cook a Wolf, M.F.K. Fisher features several Thanksgiving-appropriate recipes, from “Southern Spoon Bread” and “Quick Potato Soup” to “Sweet Potato Pudding” (though we’d recommend saving “Aunt Gwen’s Cold Shape” and its quartered calf’s head for a later date).

While Fisher’s recipes are both simple and economical, her witty, reflective prose is so absorbing that you run the risk of scalding the cream and burning the biscuits. If we’ve learned anything from Fisher, though, it’s that sustenance is about much more than the food you put in your stomach.

Once you’ve gorged on your own Thanksgiving feast and have staunchly vowed to eat only salads forthwith, allow yourself this one extra treat: check out our episode dropping Tuesday, November 30, for our conversation with M.F.K Fisher’s biographer Anne Zimmerman. Her book, An Extravagant Hunger: The Passionate Years of M.F.K. Fisher gets to the heart of why food was such an essential lifeline in the author’s sometimes-fraught (but always adventurous) existence.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Kim and Amy