(Will WE SURVIVE???) 🍗🔥🤖

Right, darlings, gather round. This year I did something gloriously unhinged: I handed the sacred keys to Thanksgiving over to an AI agent and said, “Be my guest, love. Menu, shopping, timetable, playlist—the lot. Surprise me.”

What followed was less “Martha Stewart” and more “Black Mirror does Nigella”. Buckle up.

The Prompt That Started the Chaos

(Yes, I’m showing my workings like a proper mad scientist)

“Act as an autonomous AI agent. Plan a spectacular Thanksgiving dinner for 10 adults and 3 children in London (zone 2 flat, one oven, air-fryer, induction hob). Make it delicious, slightly extravagant, Instagram-worthy, but achievable in one day. Include: full menu with recipes, timed schedule from 8 a.m., precise shopping list (with Tesco links if possible), and a banging Spotify playlist. Dietary needs: one vegetarian, one gluten-free, one child who believes peas are the devil. Go wild but don’t kill anyone.”

The agent paused for approximately 0.4 seconds, then spat out a 27-page Google Doc titled “Operation Golden Bird 🦃✨”. I should’ve been scared. I was too intrigued.

The Menu (or “How to Trigger a Family WhatsApp Meltdown”)

• Main Event: Confit-by-candlelight turkey legs + miso-butter roasted breast crowned with crispy skin “crown”

• Vegetarian Star: Truffle & wild mushroom Wellington that looked like it belonged in the V&A

• Sides (brace yourselves): – Triple-cooked duck fat roasties (GF version with goose fat, because balance) – Brown-butter Brussels sprouts with candied bacon & pomegranate jewels 💎 – “Cloud” mashed potatoes (whipped with browned butter, cream cheese and a suspicious amount of roasted garlic) – Charred honey-glazed carrots doing the can-can with dukkah – Gluten-free sausage & apricot stuffing bombs (yes, bombs)

• Sauces: Red wine & bone marrow gravy + a cranberry-port relish sharp enough to cut glass

• Pudding: Sticky toffee miso caramel pudding with clotted cream ice-cream (I’m still weak writing this)

• Bonus Chaos: “Molecular” gravy spheres that burst in the mouth. Reader, they did not burst. They bounced.

The Shopping List

Arrived at 3:17 a.m. (the agent clearly never sleeps). 127 items, colour-coded, sorted by Tesco aisle, with live price checker. It even added “emergency prosecco” and “fire extinguisher—optional but recommended”. Cheeky sod.

Total: £312.47. My ancestors who survived on turnips are spinning.

The Timetable (A Military Operation in Cashmere)

• 06:45 – Wake up to playlist (more on that horror later)

• 07:10 – Confit turkey legs in duck fat bath (flat now smells like a Michelin-starred chippy)

• 09:30 – Child screams because “peas are staring at me” (there were no peas yet)

• 11:00 – Attempt molecular gravy spheres → create edible bouncy balls → dog thinks it’s playtime

• 13:20 – Realise miso butter needs 20 minutes to infuse. Agent scheduled 4. Panic.

• 15:00 – Neighbour knocks: “Are you rendering an entire farm?”

• 16:45 – Wellington leaks truffle butter like a crime scene

• 17:55 – Oven hits 11. Smoke alarm remixes itself into dubstep

• 18:30 – Guests arrive. One cousin takes one look and whispers, “Did you get catered by Noma?”

The Playlist From Hell

The agent decided “banging” meant: Thank U, Next → Thanksgiving (a 17-minute Native American drone remix) → Sweet Caroline (because “communal singing”) → 4 hours of lo-fi turkey beats. By hour two we were all aggressively passing the prosecco and screaming “BAWM-BAWM-BAAAA” like it was Carnival.

The Verdict

• Taste: 9.7/10 — I’m writing this from a food coma.

• Aesthetics: Absurdly beautiful. Someone cried over the sprout dish.

• Stress levels: I aged 3 years in one day.

• Would I do it again? Already booked the agent for Christmas. It’s started calling me “Chef” unironically.

Moral of the story: never trust an AI that schedules “contemplate existence” between basting the bird and reducing the gravy. But blimey, it can cook.

Now if you’ll excuse me, the leftover sticky toffee pudding is whispering my name. 🍮✨

Happy Thanksgiving, you glorious lunatics. May your plates be full and your ovens less dramatic than mine. 🦃❤️