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The American Table is proud to welcome Jeremy Nguyen as our first contributing cartoonist. His single-panel cartoon will be a regular feature of the publication — arriving at the intersection of food, politics, and the American table we all share.

Jeremy Nguyen is a cartoonist and illustrator whose work has appeared regularly in The New Yorker since 2017. His single-panel cartoons have earned him a devoted following for their sharp wit, precise observation, and the rare ability to make complex ideas land in a single image. Beyond The New Yorker, his work has appeared in Wired, Airmail Weekly, and The Atlantic, and he has created original cartoon campaigns for HBO’s The White Lotus and Netflix’s The Chair. His illustrations have been published by Penguin Random House and recognized by the Society of Illustrators. He is the author of Can I Pet Your Dog?

While the cameras are in the ballroom, we’ve been working on something new for The American Table. It launches tomorrow morning at 6am — and the timing, I promise you, is not a coincidence.

We’ve brought in a remarkable talent. More on that tomorrow.

See you at the table.

The American Table

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Juleanna Glover stands at the nexus of social and political Washington. As one of the city’s best-known conveners, she’s been a fixture at events around the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, which during her 33 years working in Washington has evolved from a dinner to a weeklong cavalcade of networking, influence and money-making leavened by the occasional toast to a free press.

But this year, with the annual festivities back to their familiar frenetic pace, amidst a degree of back-to-normal excitement beyond anything in years, Glover is experiencing a distinctly unfamiliar feeling: Dread.

It has nothing to do with the virus or the war in Ukraine or even the superficiality that critics of the dinner have long denounced. Over the last few months, Glover has actually thrown book parties, hosted events, and otherwise gathered with the Washington village. Instead, it’s about politics itself and the whole idea that official Washington can get together and pretend that nothing’s changed.

Continue reading at Politico →Michael Schaffer is a senior editor at POLITICO. His Capital City column runs weekly in POLITICO Magazine.

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It discovered Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, Ang Lee, Ridley Scott, the Coen Brothers, David Lynch, and hundreds more — awarding them their first recognition before anyone outside a small circle knew their names.

Somerville has just been nominated there! That is the news. But the meaning of it runs a little deeper.

You don't have to wait for a screening. You can watch it right now. Paid subscribers to The American Table have access to the film today. One click. No film festival credential required.

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A festival that finds things first

WorldFest has a specific institutional gift: it sees work before the consensus does. Their own description of it is simple — “the winners this year will be the Spielbergs of tomorrow.” That’s not marketing. That’s a 65-year track record.

The award given is called the Remi, named after Frederic Remington, the painter and sculptor who documented the American West as it was disappearing. Somerville is doing the same work. Different terrain. Same urgency.

Somerville follows the Grove family farm in rural Virginia — 150 years of land, now under pressure from Dominion Energy, data center sprawl moving out from Northern Virginia, USPS cuts, and broadband gaps that leave rural communities competing at a structural disadvantage.

The film doesn’t take sides. It pays attention. It asks what it means — as a country — to let places like this go without noticing.

This is the moment to get on board

Rural America is chronically undercovered. When it gets attention, it tends toward exploitation or condescension. Somerville is neither. It is the view from inside, made by someone who has spent years earning the trust required to tell it honestly.

A nomination from a festival that has been right about independent film for six decades is a curatorial signal: this story belongs in the conversation.

The book is in development. The screenings are coming. The story isn’t finished — because the pressures on Somerville aren’t finished.

But a field in rural Virginia is now being seen by a festival that has seen some of the most consequential independent films ever made.

Become a paid subscriber. Watch the film. Be part of what comes next.

— Jim Bell is the publisher of The American Table and an Emmy Award-winning journalist and filmmaker.

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In America, Sunday roast chicken is the closest thing we have to a collective deep breath — and this Sunday, the country needs one. By the time most of us reached for our phones this morning, history had already moved. I remember being a kid, watching the hostage crisis play out on the evening news, my parents quiet in a way that told you something was very wrong with the world. Fifty-two Americans were held in Tehran while President Carter aged in front of the country. That was the moment Iran became something dark and permanent in the American psyche — a wound that never quite closed, a grievance that outlasted presidencies, wars, and decades of uneasy standoffs. This morning, a chapter closed. The world shifted overnight, the way it sometimes does, without asking permission. And yet here we are, standing in our kitchens, pulling a bird from the refrigerator, turning on the oven. There is something stubbornly, beautifully American about that. Sunday dinner has always been the meal that holds its ground — the most deliberate, most human hour of the week, the moment families gathered after church or work to mark time and take stock of one another. Roast chicken, in particular, has become shorthand for comfort and continuity, the meal people reach for when the ground shifts beneath them, but they’re still hungry for connection. On a morning when the headlines are electric, and the world feels both more dangerous and more hopeful at once, putting a bird in the oven is not denial. It is a declaration. The table still has to be set.

Recipe:

Active prep time: 15 minutes

Cooking time: 1 Hour

My Recipe:

1 Whole Chicken

1 Medium Yellow Onion

3/4 Medium Potatoes - Waxy like Yukon Gold

1 Clove of Crushed Garlic

Fresh Rosemary

1/4 Cup Olive Oil

Sea Salt and Fresh Ground Pepper to taste

Directions:

Pre Heat oven to 400’ F

Using a mandolin ( Be Careful!), thinly slice the onion. Place the slices with half of the olive oil in a Dutch Oven and saute over medium heat for 5 minutes.

Using a mandolin ( Be Careful!), slice the potatoes and place them on the onions. Remove from heat.

Add Rosemary and crushed garlic to the top of the potatoes

Coat the chicken with the remaining olive oil and add salt and pepper to taste. Place the chicken on top of the potatoes.

Add lid and cook the chicken in the 400’ oven for 40 minutes

Remove the lid after 40 minutes- continue cooking chicken for an additional 20 minutes, uncovered until golden brown. Total cooking time is 60 minutes, 1 hour.

Remove and let stand, uncovered for 15 min to cool

Serve!

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As temperatures plunge across the region, the Grove family of Somerville has announced the birth of sixteen healthy calves this week. Despite freezing conditions and ongoing political chill from Washington, America’s farmers continue their work seven days a week.

“We have babies!” might be the headline of the week — or perhaps, “Spring Has Come Early.” Either way, the heartland keeps moving forward.

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Like so many others, The Washington Post shaped the way I understood Washington itself. When I arrived in this city years ago, it was The Post that helped define its rhythm — the tension between power and principle, politics and people. The Sunday edition was a ritual. It didn’t pander or shout; it made you think. You could feel the integrity in its reporting, and the courage in its choice of what to print, no matter who it might unsettle.

I can’t help but wonder what happens to a democracy when institutions like The Post are forced to contract. Who tells the stories that still need to be told when newsroom lights go dark? We’ve reached a moment where economic models have overtaken editorial missions, where the quiet diligence of journalism struggles to survive the noise of content.

To the journalists packing up their desks tonight: your work has mattered. It still does. You’ve been the chroniclers of our history and the keepers of our collective accountability. The Post’s legacy isn’t diminished by this moment — it’s made even more vital.

And to the leadership in media — and I say this with deep respect — let’s remember that journalism isn’t just a business model. It’s a public trust. It’s the mirror in which a free society sees itself clearly, even when it doesn’t like the reflection.

There is still time to protect that mission. But only if we choose, collectively, to value truth over traffic and craft over clicks.

— James Bell

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Ingredients

3 pounds of Chuck Roast

Garlic slices

4 sprigs of Rosemary

1 and 1/2 pounds of small white potatoes

1 can (28 oz)  of whole Tomatoes

1 large Onion

Salt and Pepper

Olive oil

Directions

Make little slits in the pot roast and insert the garlic slices.  Salt and Pepper the roast.  Brown the roast in the olive oil.   Place in Dutch Oven.  I use my Le Creuset blue pot.

Add 1 and 1/2 pounds of small white potatoes.  Add 1 whole can (28 oz)  of whole tomatoes with the liquid. Break up the tomatoes with your hands.   Cut one large onion (at least 1 and 1/2 pounds) into wedges.  Mix in with tomatoes and potatoes.  Place 3 or 4 sprigs of Rosemary on top.  Cover.

Bake at 300 degrees for 3 hours.

Serve with romaine and radish salad.  

From Donna Hays

As I walked into Tosca on a recent visit, I was seated next to a person who, in a political and moral sense, represented everything I opposed. This person was the antithesis of my views, but here we were, breaking bread together. That's what makes this place work.

Strategically located within a few blocks of the White House and just off K Street, Tosca occupies a unique position at the intersection of public policy, lobbyists, and law firms. It's a culinary home that transcends personal preferences, catering to the powerful in America. The decisions likely made in this dining room have the potential to shape American policy and even global policy. The roster of patrons is a testament to the restaurant's ability to bring together individuals from diverse political backgrounds. It includes former and current Presidents of the United States, Vice Presidents, Senators, Members of Congress, White House staff, cabinet members, Governors, Supreme Court Justices, the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and Ambassadors, to name a few. While New York has The Grill and LA’s celebrity go-to’s Craigs and Dan Tana’s, DC is where true power presides, and Tosca is at the heart of it all.

Stepping into the kitchen to meet Chef Fortunato, I was greeted by a scene straight out of a Hollywood movie. Large stock pots simmered with bones and vegetables, preparing the 'liquid gold' for the evening's sauces. Chef Fortunato Nicotra's resume would make James Beard jealous. A culinary rock star, he earned Michelin stars at two restaurants in Sicily before his 30th birthday. Nicotra then made his mark in New York City, where he served as the Executive Chef of Lidia Bastianich’s award-winning Felidia for over two decades. The restaurant earned three stars from Ruth Reichl of the New York Times only three months after his arrival. In 2006, Frank Bruni wrote another raving review, awarding Felidia a three-star rating. Wine Spectator named Felidia one of the “Top Ten Italian Restaurants in the United States,” and USA Today ranked it number two in its year-round up of restaurants around the world. Nicotra has appeared on several television food segments, including Lidia’s Kitchen and Lidia’s Italy and the Food Network’s Iron Chef. He prepared meals for Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis I during their visits to New York.

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The team at Tosca serves everyone with precision and humility. Jonathan ten Hoopen, the genius-like, human Rolodex of the powerful and wealthy in Washington, also knows the first and last name of every cook, steward, waiter, and dishwasher in the restaurant. Here comes Johnathan with a canape or a small serving of fresh pasta with shaved black truffles, always complements of the chef. His constant warmth and welcome make the often-difficult discussions around the table just a bit easier to manage. John Neata, quiet and reserved, holds a wealth of knowledge as possibly the best sommelier in Washington. I am grateful for his friendship and advice about all things wine. Lisa Fotter, always with an eagle eye on the dining room, manages this sensitive group of patrons with the finesse of a seasoned conductor of a symphony.

I recently told managing member and owner Paulo Sacco, “You treat every single person who walks in the door like a head of state.” Paulo replied simply, “It's our hospitality; everyone is welcome here.” Tosca is more than just a restaurant; it is a testament to the power of food to bridge divides and foster connections. Whether it’s political adversaries sharing a meal or the meticulous hospitality that makes every guest feel like a head of state, Tosca embodies the true essence of dining. It’s not just about the food; it’s about the experience and the people who make it extraordinary. As I left, I couldn’t help but think that Tosca might just be the most powerful restaurant in America.

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Washington, D.C. — January 8, 2026
The Trump administration has introduced a new set of federal dietary guidelines that upend decades of conventional nutrition advice, putting red meat, full-fat dairy, and animal proteins back at the forefront of the American plate. This reordering of the familiar food pyramid marks a decisive philosophical shift — away from plant-based eating and calorie moderation toward what the administration describes as “nutritional freedom and metabolic resilience.”

The guidelines carry significant downstream influence, shaping food policies across schools, hospitals, military bases, prisons, and federal nutrition programs. Reissued every five years, they are rarely rewritten so boldly. Yet this year’s update represents both a cultural and economic statement — one reflecting the administration’s alignment with agricultural producers and a growing movement challenging decades of low-fat orthodoxy.

Critics may see politics at play in how science is being reframed; supporters will argue it restores balance to an overregulated national diet. Either way, the new plan underscores a broader realignment of health policy, personal autonomy, and the economics of what Americans eat.

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On Saturday morning, as Americans woke to news of airstrikes on Venezuela and a sitting president in U.S. custody, young Europeans were already three hours into their weekend ritual: dancing stone sober in Parisian bakeries, surrounded by baguettes and pain au chocolat, DJ spinning against a backdrop of rising dough.

The juxtaposition isn’t subtle. It wasn’t meant to be.

The bakery rave phenomenon—which began in Paris in 2019 and has since spread to Brisbane, Mumbai, and Toronto—tells us something about what a generation is choosing when they can choose anything. They’re choosing bread over bottles. Dawn over midnight. Carbs over cocktails. And increasingly, they’re choosing Europe over here.

Alexis Duvivier didn’t set out to create a sobriety movement when he launched the first bakery rave at The French Bastards in Paris’s 11th arrondissement. The French DJ and producer, who performs as Aazar, was solving a simpler problem: homesickness. After years working clubs in Miami and Los Angeles, what he missed most wasn’t the nightlife—he had plenty of that. He missed the Boulangerie.

“It was such a big part of my culture in my everyday life here in France,” Duvivier said in a recent interview. “It was the first thing I wanted to do when I went back. I was always on the lookout for the best baguette or the best pain au chocolat.”

So in 2019, to celebrate releasing his single “Diva,” he did what made sense to him: he threw a free early evening party at a bakery, spinning tracks while trays of pastries circulated through the crowd. The visuals were odd enough to go viral—DJs Bob Sinclair and Peggy Gou later played sets there, cementing The French Bastards as one of Paris’s most unlikely hot spots.

But Duvivier insists the concept wasn’t gimmicky. “I didn’t choose a bakery because I was looking for an unusual location, but because for me it represents France and represents what I love.”

What he loved was the thing itself, not the Instagram version of it. The actual butter. The actual crust. The actual gathering place where neighbors see each other daily, not the performative authenticity that passes for culture in algorithm-optimized America.

That distinction matters more this weekend than it did last weekend.

The bakery rave movement has found its biggest following among Gen Z and younger Millennials who are drinking less and prioritizing what previous generations might have called boring: sleep, health, wellness, showing up clearheaded. From a certain angle, it looks like retreat. From another, it looks like the sanest response available to people who’ve watched the world they inherited catch fire in real time, and decided the least they can do is not pour alcohol on it.

The kids dancing in Paris bakeries at 8 a.m. on a Saturday aren’t protesting. They’re not marching. They’re not posting manifestos or arguing on Twitter about what just happened in Caracas. They’re doing something both smaller and larger: they’re building the world they want to live in, one baguette and one sober dance floor at a time.

They’re also doing it over there, not here.

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Europe has become aspirational to Americans in a way it hasn’t been since before 9/11. Not the Europe of backpacking tourists or study abroad semesters, but the Europe of people who take August off and eat lunch for two hours and don’t think healthcare is a luxury good. The Europe where a bakery is a daily democratic ritual, not a $8 artisanal experience you Instagram. The Europe where young people can imagine a future that doesn’t require them to explain away their government’s foreign policy at dinner parties for the rest of their lives.

You can hear it in how Americans talk about Europe now—not with the old defensive superiority (”they don’t have free speech/air conditioning/ambition”), but with something closer to longing. We sound like Duvivier in Los Angeles, homesick for a boulangerie.

The bakery rave works because it’s performing authenticity by actually being authentic. Duvivier didn’t focus-group the concept or hire a brand consultant. He missed bread. He liked music. He put them together. The fact that it became a movement says less about his marketing savvy than about how starved people are for experiences that aren’t optimized, monetized, or weaponized.

In Washington, where I write this, we’ve spent two decades watching policymakers perform concern about foreign interventions while authorizing them. We’ve watched both parties promise to end forever wars while finding new forevers to war in. We’ve normalized a level of military involvement around the globe that would have been unthinkable to the generation that actually fought World War II, and we’ve done it while telling ourselves we’re the reluctant hegemon, the force for good, the grown-ups in the room.

The kids aren’t buying it anymore. They’re not even shopping in the same store.

When American twenty-somethings look at Europe now, they’re not seeing a museum of old cathedrals and socialist policies. They’re seeing a place where it’s possible to be young and hopeful without being naive. Where you can dance at 8 a.m. with a croissant in your hand and not feel like you’re fiddling while Rome burns, because you’re not the one who lit the match.

The French Bastards, the bakery that started all this, distinguishes itself with what it calls an “irreverent and innovative menu.” But the real irreverence isn’t in the food. It’s in the premise that young people might gather for joy rather than to numb themselves to the news. That morning might be better than midnight. That the smell of baking bread might be more nourishing than another round of drinks you don’t want to pay for and won’t remember.

That watching the sun come up might be better than staying up to see what fresh hell tomorrow brings.

As Duvivier’s concept spread—he now hosts Bakery Sessions across Europe—it stayed true to its origins. No sponsorships. No bottle service. No VIP section where you pay more to stand closer to the baguettes. Just music, pastries, and people who chose to be there clearheaded.

Meanwhile, back in America, we’re conducting operations to secure another country’s oil reserves while a military official quotes a president saying we’ll “run it for them for a period of time.” We’re doing this on a Saturday. We’re doing this in January. We’re doing this while half the country argues it’s justified and the other half argues about whether they’re allowed to say it’s not.

The kids dancing in Paris aren’t having that argument. They opted out. Not in the cynical Gen X way of the 1990s, where opting out meant you were too cool to care. In a way that suggests they care deeply, but they’ve decided caring doesn’t require participating in a system that will grind up their caring and use it as fuel.

They’re building something else instead. It’s smaller. It’s quieter. It happens at bakeries.

And for those of us who stayed, who are still here in America trying to write sense into senselessness and reason into rage, there’s something almost unbearably poignant about watching a generation choose bread and music and sobriety while we chose empire and oil and the certainty that this time, finally, we’ll get it right.

Duvivier says his bakery raves were never meant to become a social media trend. He was just trying to recreate the thing he loved about home. But maybe that’s exactly why it worked. Maybe the only authentic thing left is to stop trying to solve the world’s problems and start trying to solve your own homesickness.

Maybe the revolution isn’t a march or a manifesto. Maybe it’s just deciding that at 8 a.m. on a Saturday, you’d rather be dancing in a bakery than doom-scrolling the news from Caracas.

Maybe the kids who are dancing—sober, joyful, surrounded by bread—have figured out something we spent fifty years of foreign policy missing: that the thing people actually want isn’t democracy at gunpoint or oil secured by airstrikes.

It’s a good baguette and a place to gather.

And it turns out, you can’t export that at the end of a cruise missile.

James Bell writes The American Table from Washington, D.C., where he watches what we eat and what it means.

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Dear Friends of The American Table,

As the year comes to a close, I want to take a moment to thank you for your incredible support and enthusiasm for The American Table. Your engagement with our stories about food, culture, and politics has been truly inspiring and fuels our passion to keep bringing these conversations to life.

This holiday season, I hope your tables are filled with joy, laughter, and meaningful connections. May the dishes you share remind us all of the power of food to bring people together, no matter where we come from or what we believe.

From all of us at The American Table, we wish you a wonderful holiday season and a happy, healthy New Year. We’re excited to bring you even more stories and insights in 2026.

With gratitude!

Need a last minute gift idea? Gift your friends and family a subscription to The American Table! Click the link below to give away a subscription today!

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Happy Hanukkah! Dad's Chopped Liver

Aron Groer’s Famous Chopped Liver Recipe

Though schmaltz-less, this recipe for chopped liver has passed the taste test of countless purists. Annie Groer added a third hardboiled egg for texture. If you don’t use all of it for decorating, add what’s left to the liver. Serve with matzoh, bread, crackers or crudites. Or eat it directly from the bowl with a spoon.

4 to 6 servings

Ingredients:

• 1 pound chicken livers

• 2 tablespoons peanut or canola oil

• 1 pound yellow or sweet onions, cut into about 1/2-inch dice

• 1 teaspoon salt

• 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

• 3 large eggs, hard-cooked and peeled

Directions:

Wash the livers and remove and discard the membranes. Set aside.

In a skillet over medium heat, heat the oil. Add the onions, cover and cook, stirring occasionally, until soft and golden, 7 to 10 minutes.

Add the whole livers to the skillet and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Reduce the heat to medium-low, cover and simmer gently until cooked through but still juicy, about 15 minutes. Remove from the heat.

Using a slotted spoon, immediately transfer the livers to a food mill or meat grinder, leaving the onions and their juices in the skillet, and grind the livers while still warm. (You may pulse the livers in a food processor, but be careful to leave some chunks. You don't want a smooth pate.) Transfer the mixture to a bowl.

Using the slotted spoon, add the onions to the ground liver, leaving the juices in the skillet. Stir gently to combine. If the mixture appears to be too dry, add some of the liquid in the skillet, a little at a time, until the desired consistency is attained. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Coarsely chop 2 of the hard-cooked eggs, add them to the liver mixture and stir

gently to combine. Check again if the mixture is too dry and, if necessary, add more liquid from the skillet.

Take the remaining egg and separate the white from the yolk. Using a sharp knife, thinly slice the white into strips and place on top of the chopped liver. Using a small-holed grater, grate the yolk over the entire surface of the chopped liver. Cover and refrigerate for 2 hours.

My Father's Chopped Liver

Back in the 1970s, shortly before I left on an extended hippie trek through Latin America, my widowed, worried Daddy implored me for perhaps the zillionth time to please, please be careful. Well, of course, I always replied with a hint of exasperation. But because Aron Groer was a world-class alarmist and I, his only daughter, was part brat and part adventuress given to taking up with fascinating strangers, I humored him by suggesting we choose a secret phrase in case I was abducted by anti-imperialist guerrillas.

This cockamamie scheme required that before he paid out the first peso in ransom, he would have to hear me personally utter the words "gehakte leber," Yiddish for chopped liver, to signal I was still alive. It made perfect, if far-fetched sense, since chopped liver was one of the two signature dishes -- the other being gefilte fish -- he had developed after my mother's untimely death when my big brother Steve and I were barely in our teens.

In its way, Aron's chopped liver was a kind of mortar that held our little family together. It may have looked like a post-monsoon mix of mud and gravel, but it tasted like heaven and drew us to the kitchen table like some Proustian madeleine.

Mounded atop a Hunnakah latke, slathered on matzoh during Passover, spread daintily on celery sticks during the occasional diet, sandwiched between pillowy slices of challah most other times, or simply snarfed down by the spoonful directly from the container when no one was looking, Aron’s chopped liver became more than just a splendid example of the culinary arts. It became an edible expression of a grieving father’s love, prompting me to joke that in our working-class household, his vaunted chopped liver recipe was a major part of my dowry.

Friends and family worldwide requested it for celebrations major and minor, or for no reason other than its fabulousness. I can't count the times Steve and I brought home school chums eager for a chopped liver fix. Lord knows how many batches I hand-carried back to grad school in Wisconsin, and even to loved ones in New York City, arguably America's deli capital.

In his modest Maryland kitchen, Aron regularly achieved a near-perfect balance of sauteed chicken livers and onions, hard-boiled eggs, salt and pepper. Whether an added virtue or a grievous deficiency, however, this dish contained not a single yellow globule of schmaltz, known to most people as chicken fat, and to cardiologists as prime heart attack food.

Aron's livers were instead lubricated with cholesterol-free canola or peanut oil, which he endearingly identified as "non-fatening" in the recipe he typed for me ages ago. That linguistic lapse, plus several other phonetic misspellings, were understandable given that English was his fourth tongue, after Yiddish, Polish and French.

To purists, of course, schmaltz-less chopped liver is about as appealing as a tofu burger or carob mousse. Nonetheless, shortly before his 99th birthday, I wrote a Washington Post homage to his heart-healthy gehakte leber.

I have no recollection of him actually making chopped liver, or anything else for that matter, until my mother's untimely death in 1958. But in the early 1960s, he had an emotional reunion in Paris with his brother Moishe, and his sister Bronka, whom he had not seen since my parents bolted Warsaw for Paris in the early 1930s. By 1937, two years before Hitler marched into Poland and murdered most of their families, my father and mother arrived in Washington, DC, where she had relatives eager to help them achieve American citizenship. For this, I remain eternally grateful.

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This year, I’m giving you something special — free 10-day access (December 20–30) to watch our newest film, Somerville. (click the blue button to watch)

Watch Somerville Now!

Somerville isn’t just a film. It’s a true American story — a modern-day David versus Goliath fight to save a family farm against the odds. It’s about what happens when ordinary people stand up for what’s right, even when the system says they can’t win.

You’ll see the heartbreak and hope of a family holding on to generations of heritage — and the quiet heroism it takes to preserve something sacred: the land itself. In a time when so much feels fractured, Somerville reminds us that identity, purpose, and place still matter deeply.

From my table to yours, thank you for being part of this journey and for believing, as we do, that telling real stories can still make a difference.

Warm wishes this holiday season,
James Bell
Founder & Publisher, The American Table

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This Christmas wish list for The American Table is not really about things. It is about a way of living: the people at the table, the food on the plate, the stories that get told and retold, and the values that quietly run underneath all of it like a root system. HTSI, the Financial Times magazine, fills its pages with diamonds and watches, selling a fantasy of time and legacy and control. This year, after the deaths of two friends—Kent Knutson and Bobbie Grove—that fantasy feels thinner and the question beneath it feels sharper: if the time is not actually ours to hold, what does it mean to use it well?

For readers of The American Table, the answers almost always start in the same place: at the table. Picture a winter night when the city outside has blurred into a soft glow, and the rooms inside are a little too warm from the oven and the bodies and the candles burning down too quickly. The table is long, or at least it feels that way. The linens are not perfect, but they are real. The plates do not match, because life rarely does. The glasses might be a mix of inherited crystal and thrift‑store rescues, each one with a history you only half know. On that table sit one or two bottles that at some earlier point were deemed “too good” for an ordinary night. They were meant for a future special occasion. But this year has insisted, with a kind of brutal clarity, that “later” is an illusion. So the corks come up now, for this group in this room on this night, because this is the occasion.

At that table, in that light, Kent and Bobbie belong. Their chairs may be empty this year, but their stories are not. Kent, a Republican and a super‑lobbyist by Washington standards, somehow managed to be one of the city’s rarest breeds: a brilliant dreamer of a human being with a gentleness and kindness that cut through the usual noise. He stood on the opposite side of the aisle from a Democrat like me and yet occupied the same inner circle of friendship. That is not an accident. Kent had an anchor that predated and outlasted the Hill: his family’s black Angus heritage in South Dakota. The cattle, the land, the family history—they gave him a kind of balance and perspective that no committee hearing could touch. Karen and the kids, whom I adore, were part of that anchor too, tethering him to something solid whenever Washington tried to spin him off his axis.

Bobbie Grove, the black Angus genius of Somerville, carried a parallel story in a different key. The Grove family’s black Angus in Somerville were not just animals on pasture; they were the living expression of a way of life. Bobbie knew his cattle the way a watchmaker knows his movements, with an intimacy earned over years and seasons and setbacks. Like Kent, he staked his identity on something older and steadier than any headline. His pride, his wisdom, his sense of self were wrapped up in that herd and that land and that family name. Two men from different geographies and different daily worlds—one in the high‑pressure circuitry of K Street, one in the pastures of Somerville—both found their center in the same rural DNA.

That is the strange geometry of an American life. You can have a Washington lobbyist and a Somerville cattleman, and their lines still meet at the same table through a mutual love of black Angus cows, farming families, and one shared friend who straddles both worlds. Somewhere between South Dakota and Somerville, between the Grove pastures and the Knutson memories, a quiet braid was tied—through conversations, shared meals, and the understanding that who raises your food, and how, is not a minor detail but a moral one. A Christmas wish list that ignores their absence would feel thin. So this one does the opposite: it lets them in and lets them lead.

In practical terms, that means some of the “wishes” on this list are scenes rather than items. There is the wish for more nights when the good bottle gets opened not for prestige but for love. A grower Champagne someone drove across town to find, or a serious red with years on it, is uncorked after a simple grace and a mention of the people who taught us what good cattle, good land, and good friendship look like. The cork eases out, the room goes briefly quiet, glasses are raised, and for one moment everyone present understands that this is not a rehearsal. No tasting notes are necessary. The only important fact is that the wine is finally being used for what it was meant for: to mark a real moment with real people.

Another wish lives in the room where the books collect. On a side table or a chair by the window there is a stack: a new novel, a sharp book of essays, a serious history, a volume on food or farming, a bracing read on democracy or citizenship. They lean into one another like a group photo from different decades. For American Table readers, this stack is its own kind of luxury. It represents time claimed back from the endless scroll, attention directed toward something more demanding than a headline. In a year marked by loss, reading becomes an act of respect—for your own mind, and for the minds that have tried to leave us something sturdy and wise. A wish list that includes books is not making a token nod to “self‑improvement”; it is arguing that a life well lived asks you to go beyond your priors, to learn the stories of places like South Dakota and Somerville, to understand the systems and histories that brought food to your plate and neighbors to your street.

HTSI sells the romance of watches: tiny movements, perfect complications, polished cases that promise mastery over time. The American Table version of that romance is a plane ticket or a train ticket, a purposeful journey in which time is not conquered but savored. A trip to New Orleans in February, to Charleston before the heat, to a small Midwestern city quietly emerging as a food town, or to a hill town in Italy if you can stretch that far. The true “complication” is how vividly you can remember the first morning walk: the café you stumble into for coffee, the bakery where the door sticks, the exact way the light hits a side street you will almost certainly never see again. A dinner in a small, unassuming restaurant in a city where you barely know your way around can take on the weight of an heirloom when one of the people at that table is no longer alive to tell the story. So one wish on this list is simple: that you mark the coming year not by acquisitions but by meals and trips and conversations that etch themselves into your memory.

And then there is the kitchen, the American atelier. HTSI devotes spreads to workshops where a single ring or watch is brought into being by hand. The corresponding fantasy here is humbler and more accessible: a Sunday afternoon with no agenda but to cook. A heavy pot, a slow simmer, a wooden spoon stained by decades of sauces, a cutting board carved with knife marks like notches on a timeline. The wish is partly for the right tools: a knife that feels like an extension of your hand, a Dutch oven that can go from braise to bread to soup without protest, bowls and pans that have followed you from one life to the next. But more than that, it is for the courage to use them as often as you can, with the people you love, instead of waiting for some perfect, uncluttered ideal of domesticity. The meals you remember after someone dies are almost never the elaborate ones. They are the slightly chaotic Tuesday dinners, the over‑salted roasts, the breakfasts where the coffee was too strong and the conversation unexpectedly tender.

Because this is The American Table, the story does not stop at the edge of the countertop. Our tables are private spaces with public consequences. Just as HTSI eventually pivots from things to “foundations” and legacies, this wish list has to move outward into the civic square. One wish is for a country in which people like Kent and people like me—Republican and Democrat, lobbyist and critic—still sit down together in good faith, anchored in something older and sturdier than any party line. Another is for readers to support the ecosystems that make a real American table possible: local newspapers and nonprofit newsrooms that tell uncomfortable truths; food banks and community kitchens that keep neighbors from slipping through the cracks; legal clinics, arts organizations, and small farms hanging on at the edge of viability.

And then there is the specific inheritance of black Angus. To honor Kent and Bobbie is to recognize that the steak on your plate did not appear by magic. It came from land someone stewarded, from animals someone bred and tended, from a family that staked its identity on producing something excellent and honest. So the wish list includes a quiet directive: know your farmer. Learn who in your region is raising cattle, vegetables, grain, fruit with care and intelligence. Buy from them when you can. Tell their stories when you sit down to eat. Support the next generation who might otherwise decide that this work is too hard and too lonely to continue.

All of this adds up to a Christmas list that looks very little like a standard catalog and very much like a map. It points toward full tables, yes, and good bottles, and far‑flung meals when fortune allows. But it also points toward a life lived generously and awake. A life where a Republican and a Democrat can argue and still leave the table closer than when they sat down. A life where black Angus heritage in South Dakota and Somerville is not a quaint detail but a source of balance, wisdom, and pride. A life where we do not hoard the good wine, the blank pages in the passport, the sturdy books on the shelf, or the better angels of our nature for some future year when things are calmer.

So when you sit down to make your own list this season, imagine it less as a ledger of acquisitions and more as a set of promises. To open the bottle. To book the trip. To buy the book and actually read it. To cook the meal even if the kitchen is a mess. To support the journalist, the farmer, the neighbor doing unglamorous work. To raise a glass to Kent and Karen and the kids, to Bobbie and the Groves, to South Dakota and Somerville and every place in between that sends its labor and love to your plate. The American Table Christmas wish list, at its heart, is about this: using what we have—time, attention, resources, affection—fully and bravely now, because the people who taught us how to live that way have just reminded us, in the hardest way, that “someday” is not a plan

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We all begin in the same place: at that quiet moment before everyone arrives, when the house smells like butter and onions and something just starting to brown, and the question sneaks in—what, exactly, are we giving thanks for this year? But this time, imagine that table anchored by two very different loaves of bread: Margaret Carlson’s starter‑fed sourdough on one end, and a simple pan of cornbread or Parker House rolls on the other, the way a good Thanksgiving table holds both the elevated and the everyday, the storied and the humble.​

The American Table has always lived in that space between. Over the past year, the stories have ranged from the glittering world of private chefs—designing tasting menus in glass‑walled condos and embassy dining rooms—to the harsh arithmetic of food stamps and the looming expiration of expanded SNAP benefits that threatens to push millions of families deeper into hunger. There were stories about chocolate mousse and Champagne, and there were investigations into how a policy vote in Washington can mean the difference between a full pantry and an empty refrigerator in a town most decision‑makers will never visit.​

Threaded through it all were people. A farmer and a migrant worker, searching for hope beyond the nation’s capital while politicians traded talking points. Advocates warning that America is on the brink of the worst food insecurity crisis in generations if it allows SNAP expansions to quietly disappear. Chefs and sommeliers explaining why hospitality still matters when the headlines feel like a slow‑moving storm. And, of course, new voices at this publication—like Margaret Carlson, the trailblazing journalist who has turned her attention here, writing about baking bread in the midst of chaos and proving that a sourdough loaf can be as much a political act as a comfort.​

That sourdough is not just a recipe; it is a metaphor for what this year at The American Table has tried to be. Sourdough starts with something small and alive that you have to feed, day after day, when no one is watching, and there is nothing Instagrammable about it. Eventually, and only with care, it becomes a loaf that can anchor a table—a crust that crackles, a crumb that holds. In the same way, building a more just food system starts with quiet, unglamorous work: reading the farm bill fine print, listening to a migrant worker talk about wages, standing up in a church basement or a county meeting room to say, “This is not acceptable,” long before the cameras arrive.​

This year, the cameras did arrive in one very specific place: Somerville, Virginia. The film Somerville, released through this platform, told the story of White Ridge Farm and the Grove family’s fight against massive transmission towers that threatened to carve through their land and their sense of home. It was framed as a David and Goliath story because that is exactly what it was: a century‑old Black Angus farm, a family that had worked that soil for more than a hundred years, staring down a multibillion‑dollar energy company.​

Somerville is, at its core, a story about refusal—the refusal to accept that rural land, and the people rooted there, are expendable. It is also, now, a story marked by loss. This Thanksgiving, The American Table dedicates this essay, and this holiday, to the memory of Bobby Grove of Somerville, Virginia, whose life and courage are woven through every frame of that film and every acre of White Ridge Farm. Bobby’s battle with cancer, his determination to keep the farm going, and his quiet insistence that this land and this way of life were worth fighting for, gave the country a model of what rootedness looks like in an age obsessed with velocity and profit.​

In Bobby’s world, gratitude was not theoretical. It was sunrise over a pasture, calves dropping in a cold spring, neighbors showing up with casseroles when treatments were rough, and his sister—Donna—who kept telling their story even when it would have been easier to grant the interview, sign the papers, and disappear into private grief. To be thankful, for the Groves, was to wake up one more day on the land their family had held for generations and say, “We’re still here.” This piece is for Bobby, for that stubborn “still here,” and for every farm family in America wondering how long they will be able to say it.​

If the story stopped there—with lobster and polyester on one end of the holiday spectrum and a farm in a Dominion Energy right‑of‑way on the other—it would be a bleak kind of Thanksgiving. But America has always been a country of “and.” A 70s‑themed Thanksgiving survival guide on this site gave permission to laugh this year—to serve lobster instead of turkey, to cue up disco, to let people wear something outrageous and forget, for one night, about government shutdowns and flight delays. That wasn’t escapism for its own sake; it was a reminder that joy is fuel, not a distraction—that people fighting for land, for justice, for policy change also need to dance, to eat well, to relax into the arms of their own families without doomscrolIing every break in the conversation.​

So what is there to be thankful for in America on this Thanksgiving? Start with the obvious: the readers who have turned The American Table into a living, breathing community rather than a lonely website, pushing its audience into the thousands and proving that long‑form writing about food, politics, and rural life still has a home. Be thankful for the legendary journalists like Margaret Carlson and Annie Groer who have chosen to bring their voices and their recipes here, bridging the world of Washington panels and Sunday shows with the alchemy of flour, water, and salt. Be thankful for the chefs and private cooks who have opened up a new frontier of hospitality, showing that luxury can be about care and intention, not just price.​

Be thankful, too, for the advocates and policymakers who are still willing to be unpopular in defense of hungry families, who understand that SNAP is not charity but infrastructure, as critical as any bridge or highway. For every teacher who quietly keeps snacks in a desk drawer, every church basement pantry that stretches donations further than seems mathematically possible, every neighbor who drops off a pie or a loaf of bread on a doorstep simply because “it’s been a hard year.” That web of small, local, often invisible acts is the country at its best—messy, improvised, not nearly enough on its own, but undeniably good.​

And finally, be thankful for the possibility that runs, like a current, under all of this: the possibility that a story can still change something. Somerville exists because one family said yes to having cameras in their kitchen and their fields, trusting that if people could see what was at stake, they might care enough to act. The SNAP coverage exists because sources shared hard data and harder truths. The lobster-and-polyester piece exists because someone in your life once decided that Thanksgiving could be weird and wonderful and still count. Margaret Carlson’s sourdough exists because she kept feeding a starter when the wider world felt like it was coming apart.​

This morning, as ovens click on and someone in your house asks where the roasting pan went, an invitation is embedded in this holiday. Break bread—sourdough, cornbread, Parker House rolls, tortillas, injera, whatever your table looks like—and, in doing so, make a quiet promise: to notice who grew the wheat and who harvested the cranberries, who is being left out of the feast, which farms are being asked to sacrifice their horizons so someone far away can have cheaper power. Raise a glass to the memory of people like Bobby Grove, who showed this country what steadfast love of land and family looks like, and to the living communities still fighting in his name.​

And then, after the dishes are stacked and the candles burned low, let this be the year America decides that gratitude is not the end of the story but the beginning—that being thankful for abundance is inseparable from the work of making sure more people share in it. If this table, this newsletter, this little corner of the internet has any mission at all, it is to keep telling the stories that make that work feel not just necessary, but possible.

Thank You!

1. Châteauneuf-du-Pape Blanc

A rich, full-bodied white with orchard fruits, floral notes, and subtle spice, ideal for fall dishes like squash soup, roasted poultry, or creamy pastas.

2. Dry Riesling

 Its crisp acidity and citrusy brightness balance richer dishes like roasted duck, glazed vegetables, or sweet-and-savory sides.

3. Pinot Noir

 Elegant, versatile, and perfect for roasted turkey, chicken, or earthy mushroom dishes. Its red fruit and silky tannins make it a seasonal favorite.

 4. Petite Syrah

Petite Sirah is a great wine for colder months like November due to its rich flavor profile and ability to stand up to robust dishes.

Its bold red fruit flavors, spices, and moderate tannins make it perfect for hearty stews, roast pork, or spiced dishes.

5. Amarone Della Valpolicella

Amarone is a fantastic wine to enjoy during the colder months, especially when paired with hearty dishes. It’s also a great wine for special occasions or for those who enjoy bold, complex reds

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So—following official Washington’s lead—I’ve decided to “reduce operations” in the stress department. My plan? Revive seventies food nostalgia and serve lobster for Thanksgiving. Yes, lobster: fun, glam, a tad rebellious, and just the distraction we need while Rome burns and relatives speculate about the fate of democracy (or worse, try to explain the latest Epstein documentary at the dinner table).cnn+2​

This isn’t a new idea. In 2023, my guests cracked shells and dunked hunks of sweet lobster in drawn butter, discovering that the only thing more satisfying than a win in November was licking the plate clean. The Financial Times assures me this is “very Seventies.” Back then, food was maximalist, presentation mattered, and rules weren’t just bent—they were flambéed. We can do better: serve flair, not despair.mainelobsterfestival+4​

Of course, if you’re reading this stuck at Dallas/Fort Worth with 700,000 fellow stranded travelers, don’t despair—airlines say operations will return to “normal soon,” which in TSA-ese means your mashed potatoes will arrive just in time for Lent. Delta’s CEO has taken to national television, reassuring all that by week’s end, everyone will be home and only mildly traumatized by the experience. Remember the good old days when Thanksgiving headaches involved overcooked turkey, not federal funding lapses?nytimes+4

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Most importantly—and this cannot be stressed enough—do not, under any circumstances, bring up Epstein at Thanksgiving. Some conversational water is too murky, even for lobster. Instead, lean hard into seventies food trends: devilled eggs, towering trifles, ginger-laced pumpkin soup, disco music, and polyester that repels both gravy and difficult subjects. If the national mood swings wildly, just match it with a punch bowl, a fondue set, and “Copacabana” on repeat.

Some “Very Seventies” (and Lobster) Recipes for Your Rebellion

• Classic 1970s Deviled Eggs
  What’s more vintage than a platter of these beauties perched proudly on the coffee table, right next to the shag carpet? Hard-boiled eggs, halved and filled with a luscious mix: mashed yolks, mayonnaise, a squirt of classic yellow or Dijon mustard, sweet pickle relish, vinegar, salt, pepper, and (if you’re feeling wild) a dash of Tabasco. Pipe or spoon into whites, sprinkle with plenty of paprika, and garnish with chives or dill. Bonus points for arranging them on a molded glass platter. Optional: go full 70s kitsch with a spoonful of curried yolk or a bacon crumble on top.​ https://nerdswithknives.com/classic-deviled-eggs/

• Pumpkin Soup With Creole Lobster
  Hearty, spicy, with a sweet undertone—fresh lobster meat, cinnamon, nutmeg, 1 sugar pumpkin (or butternut squash), a dash of cayenne, and finish with crème fraîche. Start the meal this way.
  mainelobsterfestival​

• Mini Brioche Lobster Rolls
  Maine-style, with chopped lobster, tarragon, and lemon zest on mini brioche buns. Serve as a passed appetizer, preferably with disco-era cocktails.
  capeporpoiselobster+1​​

• Lobster and Bacon Stuffing
  Lobster, cherrywood smoked bacon, sautéed onions, garlic and semolina bread. Bake hot until the table gathers in awe (and a little confusion).
  mainelobsterfestival​

• Retro Dessert: Towering Trifle
  Layers of chocolate pound cake, custard, tinned fruit, Jell-O if you dare, and clouds of whipped cream. The higher it tips, the bigger the laughs.
  epicurious​

This Thanksgiving, embrace the chaos—with claws, camp, and a refusal to talk politics (beyond mild jokes about federal shutdowns for dessert). When the kitchen fills with laughter, disco, and the insane optimism of the Seventies, remember: the best way to survive family and national crises is with joy, butter, and a refusal to let the headlines take the wheel.

So here’s to lobster, laughter, and pure culinary insurrection. May your stuffing be bacon-laced, your flights ungrounded, and your conversation blissfully Epstein-free.

Happy Thanksgiving, America. The only thing being shut down this year is boredom.

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Warm regards,
The American Table Team

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