‘The long table’ Thanksgiving

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So what do you do when you have 41 people coming over for Thanksgiving dinner? Have it outside and pray there’s no rain....

Every year, we host what we call ‘The Long Table’ Thanksgiving at the house. We invite family and friends (and friends of friends). It’s a potluck-style affair -- we provide the turkeys and the guests each bring a signature dish.

The event is pretty magical. We’re going on four years now and our ‘family’ has grown, from about 20 the first year... to the 41 we counted for this event. Every year we set up outdoors -- one long table, literally, going down the length of the driveway.

It was a lot of fun and a no-fuss affair and -- thankfully -- the weather worked out beautifully. We had a lot of amazing food and turkeys galore (two deep-fried, two smoked and one turducken). And our only argument, if you could call it that, was over the table itself: Should we really have one long table, or could we break it up to make it easier for guests to move around? We decided on the latter.

-- Noelle Carter

Photos by Marta Every and David Colker