Today is Turkey Day (also known as Thanksgiving in the U.S., or as the harvest festival in previous Animal Crossing games). Franklin the chef was at the plaza, along with most of my villagers! It was quite a festive scene that reminds me of the harvest festival on GameCube. And the hats that villagers wear also resemble Franklin’s original hat.
The event, however, works much like it did in New Leaf. We have to gather ingredients for Franklin, and then he will cook each dish. First up was some clam chowder. He asked me to gather up three manila clams (he likes to use local ingredients) from the beach.
I dug them up and took them to the turkey. It was time to start cooking!
He made the chowder and then gave me a Turkey Day rug for helping out. Next, he wanted to make some pumpkin pie, which required just an orange pumpkin and a white pumpkin. I simply grabbed them from my pumpkin patch and handed them over to Franklin. He made the pie and then handed me a Turkey Day wall.
Next up was some seafood gratin. He needed a round mushroom and a mussel. One thing I can’t help noticing is that the foods require fewer ingredients than they did in New Leaf. Anyway, I got the mushroom out of storage and went diving for the mussel. Franklin made the gratin and gave me some Turkey Day flooring.
The final dish was a fish meuniere. For that, he needed a sea bass and a dab. When I spoke to Hornsby, I noticed a Turkey Day typo!
After changing into a chef’s hat to become Jeff the chef, I went fishing and caught a dab. But before I went looking for a sea bass, I decided to try out another aspect of Turkey Day: getting ingredients from islanders that are cooking at home. When I visited Midge, she needed a turban shell I had in my pockets. I handed it over, and in return, she gave me a sea bass!
But she also clued me in that you can make dishes even better by adding secret ingredients!
New Leaf’s harvest festival had secret ingredients too, but here, Franklin made no mention of it! At least not yet. I took the sea bass and dab to Franklin and he made the final dish. He gave me a cornucopia for completing all four dishes.
But then he also mentioned that I could go above and beyond by bringing him the secret ingredient for each dish. Unlike in New Leaf, these can be added after the dish is already done. That’s a big relief!
So I helped out my villagers and learned tips for the secret ingredients. Then I spent a bunch of time fishing and diving to find everything I needed. Fortunately, you don’t need to re-acquire the original ingredients; just add the new ones!
I eventually upgrade all four dishes, and they now have a golden sparkle to show that they’re extra special.
Franklin also gave me a Turkey Day casserole, Turkey Day decorations, Turkey Day table, and…a DIY recipe collection that teaches me how to make all of the Turkey Day furniture! I crafted the remaining items and turned my exercise room into a Turkey Day room.
The furniture looks realistic, and it has a warm, cozy feel to it…even if it seems a bit old-fashioned. It’s quite a departure from the pink and purple harvest furniture that appeared in the older games.
One interesting thing about Turkey Day: I’m pretty sure that rare fish and sea creatures seem to show up more often today. I caught multiples of things I rarely see, like football fish, rays, and pikes. While diving, I caught my very first sea pig and Dungeness crab.
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone in the U.S.! I hope you all enjoyed your Turkey Day!
Update: Here is my Turkey Day video.
love ur posts jeff
Hey Jeff, I only started reading your blog around August ish so in the last month I went to the start and read all the way through it! I love all your little puns in your vids too! You will be earning yourself a new sub! 😋 Never stop what your doing!! 🙂
Thanks! I’m glad you enjoy the blog and videos! And thank you for the sub! Don’t worry, I have no intentions of stopping. 🙂
Odd – nothing felt more common for me, in fact it took me like 15 minutes to find a mussel and I just traded a horse mackerel with a villager to get a Dungeness Crab since I didn’t want to face the pain of finding it.
Happy Thanksgiving! I liked Turkey Day in New Horizons. I also feel like rarer things became more common. I caught several rays, a blue marlin, and I had trouble finding sea bass. While diving I did not get anything rare or anything I did not already have. I did not already have Dungeness crab so I used that for the recipe and I will wait to donate one when I catch one.
I caught a Dungeness crab earlier
I sadly didnt had turkey day in the game. I restarted my town 5 days ago and made a new island. I am going for a Canada themed island. Ofc i gave my most valuable items the villager photos to my friend to keep them so i dont lose them. (I have 10.) I might time travel to the holiday some time but i dont really like time traveling. My 2 starters were Hazel ( pretty ugly ) and Scoot who is a cute ducky. I already set up my 3 villager plots and all of them are sold. Yesterday Bubbles moved in ( ewwwwwww). Today Margie is moving in and tommorow Jeremiah arrives. Your opinions on these villagers ? I never had any of them before even tho i play since new leaf. I think bubbles is really ugly, Margie is really cute and Jeremiah is lazy which is immidiatly a + in my book.
I hope u celebrated your Thanksgiving good ! ( if u did ofc)
I dont celebrate it here in Europe
Have a great day!
Wow so if you just start an island you don’t get turkey day? That’s strange , I wonder why that happens. Also a Canada themed island when you live in Europe is really interesting and cool! In Canada we celebrate Thanksgiving a month earlier so maybe they just celebrated it before you got there :p
Sorry you didn’t have Turkey Day on your island. 🙁 But I like both Margie and Jeremiah. I hope you enjoy having them in your town! 🙂
I was baffled as to why the (lone) customization option for the special Turkey Day furniture was “spring” (primarily green and yellow vs brown and orange), but then I remembered this game has hemisphere differences, which is probably balso why it’s Turkey Day now instead of Harvest Festival. Likely the green/yellow is the default and brown/orange the customization for southern hemisphere players (who are likewise collecting cherry blossom petals while we were collecting maple leaves). Either way, I’m just glad the Turkey Day furniture doesn’t require any special ingredients and can merely be customized with kits.
I hope you had a great Thanksgiving Jeff! Gotta say the furniture for this event to me is the best one yet. It reminds me of actually things you would see at thanksgiving.
It was good, thanks! I hope you had a good one too (if you celebrated). That’s a good point about the furniture! It’s very different from the old harvest furniture.