Thanksgiving Dinner

Thanksgiving. A day to watch sports on television, to play touch football in the front yard. A day to be spent with family and close friends, to sit around a table and feast on a delicious meal labored over by the cook or cooks in the family with love.

Now, if you were to sit back and close your eyes and visualize this meal, it may look something like this:

• Turkey, cooked to perfection, fried or baked
• Dressing or Stuffing, depending on where you are from
• Mashed potatoes with turkey gravy (lumpy and smooth)
• Green beans, corn, broccoli, or some other type of vegetables
• Egg rolls or some other appetizer
• Tossed salad with dressing
• Cranberries, jellied or sauced
• Aunt Betty’s potato salad, green bean salad, or whatever is hidden behind something.
• Rolls with butter
• Grannie’s fruit salad jello with whipped topping
• Pumpkin, chocolate, or other pie
• Ice cream
• Surprise dessert, for the fun of it
• Soda, Tea, Kool-aid, and/or Coffee
• Maybe some wine or beer, depending on your beliefs

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Across the US, most houses will be having some variation of this meal, thinking that the meal is part of the meaning of Thanksgiving. Up to a few years ago, I would have included my family in that statement.

One Holiday Season, we broke after we had eaten and still had half a bird left as leftovers to eat over the next few days. I don’t remember who said what first, but it amounted to that we were tired of turkey and wanted to eat something else next year for Thanksgiving. He never wanted to see a whole Turkey again, and I couldn’t have agreed more. I was so tired of having to clean up afterward, on top of eating turkey every year.

My family is tiny, and turkeys are generally more giant birds than chickens, so we’d always have leftovers for days. So when we told our daughters (and sons, who sometimes ate with us) our plans for the next year, we were surprised by their reaction. They were glad. Come to find out, they hated turkey but felt like they had to have turkey because, you know, Thanksgiving.

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So, for the last seven years, my family has taken requests from everyone; we discuss the options and decide what we want. The first year, it was Ribeyes. The following year was a chicken and dressing. Another year, it was homemade pizzas for everyone because my youngest daughter said turkeys had approved pizzas. This year? This year, there will be steak and cheese sandwiches. Why? That’s just what we wanted. My youngest child usually opts for a homemade or store-bought pizza stuffed crust because I don’t let her have those too often throughout the year. We

Because you know what? It doesn’t matter what you eat for Thanksgiving. What matters is who you spend the day with and what you are thankful for.

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Things I am Thankful for:

• My husband
• My daughters
• My sons
• Being alive
• Having a place to live
• Having food to eat

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Thank you for reading my musings!

Happy Thanksgiving