Occasional cooks: this, that and some Thanksgiving sides

Here is your weekly thread to talk anything and everything food. 

Share what you're cooking this week, ask for tips or recipes for a dish, tell us about your meals out.

Via Bon Appetit

This list of 25 mocktails from Bon Appetit is very enticing as I stare down the approach of summer. I'd never have imagined beet sumac soda appealing to me, and yet it does.

Via Good Food

If you need to clear out your pantry, here's a great list of recipes using staples. This one-pot lamb biryani looks good.

Via Bon Appetit

These sweet potatoes with charred lemons and crunchies look yum.

Via Good Food

While looking for pumpkin pie recipes, instead I found this hasselback pumpkin with herb butter (this uses butternut squash, which is called butternut pumpkin here).

Here's a poll of the worst Thanksgiving sides - however, as 8% said mash potatoes, and 7% said dinner rolls, I don't think the results are valid.

Via Great British Chefs

If you're planning potatoes, I'm going to link to my directions for roast potatoes from earlier in the year - these really are the best.

And here's Lifehacker on mashed potatoes.

Never having cooked a turkey (or a chicken, come to think of it), I'm not going to attempt to find recipes for that...

Are you hosting Thanksgiving, and what do you have planned for the meal?