Today is Epiphany, the day the Three Kings reach the manger, or pesebre, to present their gifts to Jesus.

I’m not sure to what extent Epiphany is celebrated in the United States* beyond special readings for Catholic masses near the date, but it’s always had significance for my family in that it marks the end of the Christmas holiday. Backing up a bit, I’ll explain how we begin Christmas. It’s a tradition of my family’s to celebrate the coming of Christmas each year by saying a series of prayers, a Novena, in Spanish over the nine days that precede the holiday. Part of this tradition is to gather together each evening around the pesebre (at my parents’ it is literally a miniature town meant to represent all of Bethlehem constructed on a hill of Spanish moss and elaborately decorated), pray and sing traditional villancicos accompanied by a band of toy percussion instruments. Tom and I have carried on this practice because we enjoy the songs, have fun making “music,” and love the old-Spanish poetry of the prayers themselves. I found our pesebre at Steeple People, our neighborhood thrift store, a couple of years ago, and this year for Christmas I gave my older sister Marcela a pesebre of her own that I came across at a local estate sale.

Given all of that, decorations—including the pesebre—must be up by December 16 in time for the beginning of La Novena. And, Christmas decorations aren’t taken down until after Epiphany. Growing up, I was always horrified by cast-off trees already at the side of the road for garbage collection on December 26, just one day after Christmas. As as adult though, I have found it challenging to keep the tree through January 6, what with it dropping needles everywhere and becoming something of a fire hazard. Fortunately this year that hasn’t been a problem!

Before the decorations come down, though, the Three Kings, who’ve been traveling across the living room to reach the manger since mid-December, arrive to greet the Holy Family.

Happy Epiphany and feliz día de los reyes magos to all!

*Internationally, Epiphany is often the day families exchange gifts, rather than on Christmas itself.

Every Christmas my father prepares buñuelos for the family on the mornings of the 24, 25, and 26 so that all can have their share—no matter their arrival time. A round Colombian cheese bread, buñuelos are made from corn starch, shredded queso campesino, milk, and a little salt and sugar (we first mentioned them here). They are made from a very wet dough, as you’ll see below, and fried to perfection. The dough-balls turn naturally in the hot (but not too hot) oil, and can be helped along with the tap of a chopstick or the end of a wooden spoon. They’ll be firm to the touch when ready to be removed from the oil, and are best eaten warm. As kids we’d sometimes have them with peanut butter and milk. As a lover of sausage biscuits, this year another idea occurred to me…

Enjoyed for the first time today, “Buñuelo Sliders” proved to be a very repetible experiment.

Update: For the recipe, see comments below.

Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday. This was the second year in a row in which I was cooking in isolation from my extended family in Michigan since relocating to Minnesota. I miss having my whole family together and all their different contributions to the meal. On the other hand, cooking in Minneapolis for a small crowd, I have complete control over the meal. This satisfies the control-freak in me, and also allows a bit of flexibility about how I cook the bird.

The bird in question arrived from Clancey’s Meats & Fish last Monday. I was wide-grinningly excited when our turkey — which had never seen the inside of a freezer — showed up under Martha’s arm; I immediately set about dismembering it. Originally, my plan was to cook the bird whole, in search of that classic Norman Rockwell moment. But after reading Kenji Lopez Alt’s enlightening “Turkey Stuffed Turkey” article I could not resist taking my turkey apart. It just makes so much sense: the legs and the breasts are two different kinds of meat that demand different treatments — they are done at different temperatures — and, best of all, if you cut the legs and breasts off, you have the whole carcass to make turkey stock in advance, to be held at the ready for all your stuffing/dressing and gravy needs.

After dismantling the turkey, I salted the legs and thighs and refrigerated them overnight. The next day, they were ready to confit in a crockpot with plenty of olive oil, bay leaves, thyme, orange zest, peppercorns and juniper berries. Before removing the breasts, I carefully took the majority of the turkey’s skin off in one piece — I think Hannibal Lecter would have been proud. The breasts and skin were reserved for Thanksgiving day. Meanwhile, I roasted the rest of the carcass and boiled it down into stock. The copious amount of bones made available by cutting the turkey apart meant that I got a thick, gelatinous stock.

For reference, a ten pound free range turkey produces about 2 ½# of white meat. I felt like a mad scientist rolling the two breasts together and wrapping them in their own skin per Lopez Alt’s instructions. The technique worked out really well; the meat cooked very evenly and the skin even managed to adhere to the meat, no Activa required. Go figure.

My quest to use all parts of the turkey resulted in the surprise best dish of the evening, a turkey liver pâté. After soaking the turkey’s liver in milk for two hours to leech out some supposed metallic flavors, I sauteed it in butter along with some shallots. This I ground to a paste in my food processor along with thyme, turkey meat left over from the stock, salt, lots of black pepper, some juniper berries and a bit of heavy cream. After baking this mixture in a water-bath in a 300°F oven for an hour I cooled it and refrigerated it overnight. The result was amazing. I have been dabbling in terrines, pâtés and other potted meats for well over a year now. The results, while always pretty good — how can you go wrong with potted meat? — were always missing something, or featuring too much. Either I have learned enough or the stars were just aligning right for this Thanksgiving: the pâté was creamy, rich, slightly gamy and very peppery. Great with mustard, pickled green beans and olives. Not how I’ve usually started off Thanksgiving, but possibly a new tradition!

One can hardly have Thanksgiving appetizers without Thanksgiving cocktails. Martha found the recipe we used on Apartment Therapy: 1½ oz rye whiskey (Wild Turkey, of course), ½ oz triple sec (substituted for clear curaçao), 2 oz apple cider, 1 tsp simple syrup and a couple of cranberries for garnish. Changing every “oz” to “cup” we successfully octupled the recipe with enough for everyone to enjoy two.

As for the rest of the meal, it was more or less what you would expect. Mashed potatoes, stuffing, fresh cranberry sauce, sauteed green beans with lemon, roasted parnsips, carrots and brussels sprouts, roasted turkey breast and turkey leg confit and plenty of gravy to cover it all.

In some ways Thanksgiving is a stupid meal: nobody can make all these dishes perfectly at the same time. We’d be better off focusing on just a couple and having a really great meal. But it’s Thanksgiving, it happens only once a year, and frankly, nobody expects it to be perfect. That’s why there’s gravy.