Picture the night before Thanksgiving. You probably get out of work a few hours early because your boss is excited to get their holiday started earlier too. You rush to get a few last minute items at the grocery store (which they are probably sold out of because you waited until the last minute AGAIN this year), order a pizza or other variation of take-out (because you are NOT cooking two days in a row), and when you show up to your house, ALL your friends are there! The cousins you only see once a year, your sister-in-law (you’ll see her again for dessert tomorrow), the co-worker who is not family so you never see her on Thanksgiving but want to because you are closer than family since you spend most of your kid-free hours with her at the office, and the best friend who actually knows everything about you. Oh, and the sister who doesn’t cook at all but will eat anyone under table? She’s there too!
Yes, the Chop-n-Sip is work!
Every aforementioned person (save the non-cooking lovely) has brought their work with them! The prep work, the grunt work, the chopping, dicing, peeling, cutting, mashing, smashing, blanching, mixing, mincing labor that goes into the Thanksgiving feast is done by these unsung Holiday Heroes…
…but wait! There is the Sip as well! Admission to the annual Chop-n-Sip is a bottle of wine! So you have working hands, bottles of wine, 70 pounds of potatoes, 30 pounds carrots, 30 pounds of squash, and more (BUT DO NOT BRING THE SQUASH WHOLE WE WILL ROAST YOU LIKE A TURKEY!) Everything is set up like a conveyor belt of peel — cut — chop –package. We pick who goes first based on who has brought in the best bottle of wine. (Tip: DO NOT go last if you want your potatoes to be the appropriate size).
The fun is over once the wine is gone and everyone is packed up and ready to split off to their respective homes and slumber for the big day!
(Safety note: another awesome perk of the Chop-n-Sip is that whoever drinks the most wine gets to have Thanksgiving breakfast with us too!!!)
I love the Chop-n-Sip as an extension of a holiday tradition that shows me that my family and community do love me and each other enough to not let us have calluses on our hands alone during the holiday season. To all my attendees past present and future: thank you, don’t forget to bring wine, and remind me to buy the baking ingredients BEFORE we start the wine! (That poor cashier that year when I walked to the store…)
