“How to Make Everything” Makes Thanksgiving Completely From Scratch

You might remember Andy George from the “How to Make Everything” channel, who spent $1,500 and six months to make a sandwich completely from scratch – including growing his own wheat and vegetables, milking a cow for cheese and butter, and boiling down ocean water for salt.

If he’d do all of that for one sandwich, what do you think he’d do for Thanksgiving dinner?

“There’s plenty of abundance in the US when it comes to Thanksgiving,” George says in his latest series. “When you can walk down to the store and buy everything you need for your dinner table, maybe the true meaning of Thanksgiving is lost on us. In true ‘How to Make Everything’ fashion, I’m going to challenge myself to skip the store and make everything entirely from scratch. I hope to discover how the Pilgrims originally felt when they sat down to enjoy the fruits of hard labor.”

Over four episodes, with quick history and industry lessons along the way, he shows us how he made sugar from sugar beets picked from a field in Minnesota, harvested cranberries from a bog in Wisconsin (and accidentally fell in), foraged acorns and grew mushrooms and herbs to make stuffing, and brushed up on his shotgun skills so he could hunt a turkey.

After prepping and cooking all that up, along with some potatoes from his garden and some leftover butter, flour and milk from previous experiments, George had a full Thanksgiving dinner to share with his friends.

Watching the series made me pretty hungry – and grateful that all I have to do tomorrow is relax with some wine while my relatives cook store-bought ingredients.