The Thanksgiving feast has always been about extravagance, but at one time the custom was to go out to a restaurant instead of cooking it yourself. This was mainly during the Gilded Age (1870-1900), when fancy restaurants opened in American cities. It may seem strange to us now, but consider that the Pilgrims didn't eat at home with the family -they had a massive community feast to celebrate the harvest.

It seems to have been during the Gilded Age when the Thanksgiving banquet at the luxury hotel or restaurant first became popular. This coincided with a general movement into fashionable new restaurants by the upper class. “Before then, you stayed home because you didn’t want the riffraff to see what you were doing,” says Evangeline Holland, a social historian who writes about the late Victorian and Edwardian periods on her website edwardianpromenade.com “But with the rise of the nouveau riche, people in England started dining out at restaurants and Americans followed suite.”

What better day to flaunt what you had than on Thanksgiving? “With the Gilded Age, everything is over the top,” says Stephen O’Neill, associate director and curator of collections at Pilgrim Hall Museum. “Thanksgiving is very much a celebration of abundance, so I think they sort of used that as an excuse to promote these extravagantly large dinners.”

The affairs were held at such famous, luxury hotels and restaurants as the Vendome, Delmonico’s and the Waldorf Astoria in New York. Even luxury cruise ships got into the act, offering elaborate Thanksgiving Day dinners to their seaborne passengers. The upper crust in smaller communities had them, as well, usually at the fanciest place in town.

The custom tapered off, particularly during the Great Depression and World War II. Somewhere along the line, the idea of home and family came to be associated with Thanksgiving dinner, but it was not always so. Read more about the extravagant offerings of the poshest hotels and restaurants of the time at Smithsonian's Food and Think blog.

What's better than boring old pumpkin pie? Well, if you're a fan of cookies or cheesecake, you might just prefer these delicious pumpkin cheesecake stuffed cookies from Tahnycooks! They even feature a delicious maple sugar glaze on top to tie all those wonderful flavors together. While everyone will expect pie on Thanksgiving, it doesn't hurt to have a few other dessert options, and with something this rich and delicious, they are certain to be a hit.

(Photos: Niko Triantafillou)

S’more season (that’s all year) is upon us! Niko Triantafillou visited the Macaron Parlour in the East Village of New York City for an appropriate snack. That bakery is locally famous for its exotic macarons, including the Cheeto macaron.

Although Cheetos are a traditional Thanksgiving food, the Macaron Parlour has prepared a treat for a more modern palate: the s’mores-stuffed donut.This graham cracker-topped donut is filled with a mixture of marshmallow and chocolate ganache. Yummy!

-via That’s Nerdaclious

We’ve seen luxurious Snickers cupcakes and popcorn-coated, chocolate-covered Snickers cupcakes. Now it’s time to Snickerfy fudge. Foodblogger Little B. steps up for the task.

A Snickers bar consists of nougat, caramel and peanuts covered with milk chocolate. Little B. doesn’t stay completely true to that design, but her fudge bars certainly look like them and would be delicious.

The bottom layer consists of milk chocolate, butterscotch chips and peanut butter. The second layer has marshmallow crème, peanut butter, evaporated milk, butter and peanuts. The third layer has melted caramel cubes mixed with heavy cream. Finally, the entire confection is topped with a layer of milk chocolate, butterscotch chips and peanut butter. Yummy!

-via Tasteologie

If you love the TV show Bob's Burgers than you know that the Burger of the Day sign is one of the best running gags on the show. Aside from delightfully terrible puns, they also often have bizarre ingredient combinations, that often sound outrightly awful. Of course, on occassion they actually sound pretty amazing -save for the terrible puns.

That's why it's so great to see The Bob's Burger Experiment, a site dedicated to replicating all of the burgers on the show. While they only have a few pages of burgers so far, they started with some of the best, like the Pepper Don't Preach above, featuring black pepper and garlic topped with a creamy raspberry chevre and diced cherry peppers, and the So Much Thyme, So Little Parsley Burger below that has a mixture of garlic, olive oil, tomatoes, gruyere cheese, and parsley and is served with a time salad.

Via Geekosystem

There's nothing quite so perfectly comforting on cool winter days as a thick, chunky stew. But sometimes you just want a snack, not a whole meal -especially if you're munching on the go. The good news is Cheetos has you covered with their new creamy stew flavor. Also, they probably won't send you to the hospital by erroding the lining of your stomach. The bad news, as you might have guessed based on the writing in the picture, is that they are only available in Japan like so many other heavenly snack flavors.

What's the greatest thing since sliced bread? How about butter that doesn't ruin your toasted sliced bread when you try to spread it? Behold, shredded butter!

Japan company Metex created this amazing gizmo called "Easy Butter Former": a grater for a butter. All you have to do is put a regular stick of butter in the contraption and twist to dispense a stringy, easy to spread butter.

View more pics over at Ketai Watch and Kotaku

I don't know about you guys, but I think Axe smells simply foul. Unfortunately, thanks to their many effective marketing campaigns, all sorts of men wear it in excess. If you really want to attract the ladies though, you should instead reach for this new bacon deodorant by JD's, makers of Bacon Salt. The 24-hour protective Power Bacon is just what you need to wipe away that nasty sweat smell after you work out (or from participating in a competitive eating contest) and slather on that sexy smoked pig odor.

As the admittedly lengthy name implies, these delicious treats include Oreos, even if they aren't in their most common sandwich cookie form. Instead, the cookies are ground down into a paste, wrapped around fresh raspberries and then covered in white chocolate. In this picture, they are decorated for Christmas, but these delicious and decadent treats would also be great for Thanksgiving whether as an alternative to pies or an extra dessert option. You can learn how to make these yourself thanks to Butter, with a side of Bread.

If you’ve only seen the first movie, you probably know that the people in The Hunger Games are pretty hungry (unless they’re living in the Capitol), but you might not realize just how food is specifically mentioned in the books to illustrate the difference between the impoverished people living in the many districts and the wealthy urbanites in the Capitol. In fact, there are even a few cookbooks written about these foods.

If you’re ready to go check out The Hunger Games: Catching Fire premiere this weekend, consider getting in the spirit before you hit the theater with these delicious recipes inspired by The Hunger Games. I’d like to give a special thank you to Fictional Food, which specializes in recreating recipes from popular fictional sources.

Burnt Nut Raisin Bread

Easily the most famous food mentioned in The Hunger Games is the burnt bread Peeta gives to Katniss –even the movie showed this scene. Fictional Food has a great recipe for recreating these loaves, but you might want to skip the burning step unless you really want your food to be accurate to a fault.

Fish Stew

The day before the reaping, Katniss goes out fishing, foraging and trading, returning home to a stew of fish and greens. She adds the strawberries and bread she collected while out to the meal, which makes Fictional Food's picture all the more authentic -and the recipe looks pretty accurate too.

Basil-Wrapped Goat Cheese

Only four pages into the first novel, Katniss’ sister, Prim, makes her a special treat for the reaping ceremony –basil wrapped goat cheese. Fictional Food’s recipe doesn’t just show you how to wrap basil around goat cheese (that would be way too easy), but also how to make your own goat cheese from scratch just like Prim.

Creamy Orange Chicken

Imagine living your whole life barely getting enough food to survive and then meeting with a stylist (Cinna) who pushes a button on a table to reveal this impressive spread. It’s no wonder Katniss immediately wonders “What it must be like, I wonder, to live in a world where food appears at the press of a button?”

While we might not be able to push a button and make our food appear, we can at least head to the store and buy all the ingredients for this luscious, creamy chicken and orange dish served with green peas and pearl onions and pudding the color of honey. In fact, the hardest thing for the chefs at Fictional Food to master was shaping the roll like a perfect flower.

Lamb Stew With Plums

In Katniss’ interview with Casear, he asks what impressed her the most since she arrived in the Capitol. When she answers “the lamb stew,” the host and audience laugh and Casear agrees that he too adores the stuff. This recipe by My Burning Kitchen adapted a Julia Child’s recipe to create this delicious-looking delight.

Roasted Rabbit

(YouTube link)

Do chemists make better cooks? Probably, but it also might take them all day to do it, because they're experimenting and explaining the process along the way. Anyway, the rest of us can be the better cooks for their efforts. The American Chemical Society brings us some timely tips for improving our Thanksgiving feast.

This video is an opportunity to share my mother's cranberry sauce recipe, in case I haven't already: feed fresh cranberries and quartered oranges (peel and all) through a food grinder, then add sugar to taste. That's all. No cooking, so the antioxidants are preserved pretty well. It's so flavorful that you can only take it in small quantities, which makes it a great palate cleanser. Now you're cooking with SCIENCE!

What's better than Minecraft? How about Minecraft mixed with Doctor Who? Well, maybe not everyone will agree, but if you're a Whovian who can't stop digging for diamonds, gold and dungeons (like me), you will. And this cake by the Regali Kitchen has all the Whovian Minecraftian goodness you can stand with wonderful blocks of fondant frosting and a nice Doctor avatar ready to take on a blocky weeping angel and Dalek. Just hope you don't end up biting into a block of diamond while you munch down.

(YouTube link)

Here's a subject we can all rally around! Jesse Wellens raps about chocolate chip cookies. The cookie dance is simple" Hands up, hands down, put the cookie in the milk, twirl it all around. Even I could do that! -via Daily of the Day

I don't know about you, but it's sometimes incredibly hard to choose between munching on pizza and nachos. Fortunately, Two Peas and Their Pod has figured out how to combine the two into one bizarre and wonderful snack favorites. 

Aside from the obvious topping crossovers like pepperoni, olives, red onions and bell peppers, the nachos also have a great mashup flavor with a rich, garlic cream sauce. Alternatively, a spicy tomato sauce like arribiata would be a great blend between tomato sauce and salsa.

Via Foodie Tale

(YouTube link)

Quick, someone call Cookie Monster! Here's a TED-Ed video he'll want to see. Knowing the science behind how cookies bake will help you become a knowledgable, well-rounded person, but it probably won't help you to remember to take them out of the oven at the right time. Still, when your cookies fail, you'll be able to explain to your disappointed children exactly what went wrong. I'm sure that will excite them. Read more on this chemistry lesson from Stephanie Warren at TED-Ed. -via Viral Viral Videos