What's for (Thanksgiving) dinner?

Part of this post is to take a moment and reminisce about all my favorite Thanksgiving foods (aka starchy foods). Part of this post is to remind people that in between Halloween and Christmas there is a holiday that may not have all the glitzy songs or decorations, but has what I consider to be most important: kick ass food.

This week is Thanksgiving and I for one am most excited to pile a load of cheesy, sweet, deliciously comforting carbs on a plate and devour it. It's the one tradition of Thanksgiving that I've been able to keep. As a kid, we didn't have a ton of Thanksgiving traditions. In fact, the only tradition seemed to be that we got together, which looking at it now seems like a good tradition to keep.

The Wrye Family Thanksgiving included getting up and going to both sets of grandparents. Some times we went to my mom's family first. Sometimes, my dad's. It just depended on when my mom's set decided to do something. My dad's side, aka my Grandma Wrye, always had dinner ready about 4 p.m., complete with setting off the smoke detector. Thanksgiving wasn't really Thanksgiving unless one of my tall, male relatives was reaching up to take the 9-volt out of the detector at some point. Never for anything big. Usually just some forgotten rolls. In the end, it was the BEST.

My mom's side, on the other hand, makes dinner for other people 363 other days a year as they own a restaurant. So my grandpa would insist that my grandma not cook a big meal. Sometimes she listened and we ate pizza. Sometimes she didn't and we had all the fixins. Toward the later years, my grandpa made sure my grandma didn't cook and made reservations for us to eat together. That was also awesome and the best. Again, the theme being that we actually got to see each other.

But as I got older and my time off was saved for the "big" holidays and people became more scattered, sometimes the only "Thanksgiving meal" I would get would be from the potluck at work (which is actually the smartest way to do it. Our office would pay for a precooked turkey and everyone brought in everything else. For the price of one dish (or bag of rolls if you were really lazy), you could get a full Thanksgiving meal.)

Now I'm fighting to keep Thanksgiving. It's hardly worth it to go all out for a full dinner for just the two of us
when I know the leftovers will never get eaten. So, I've picked my favorite carb and his and we'll dine on them. It will be delicious, if turkey-free. Maybe I'll get a pumpkin pie too. I love me some pumpkin pie. Or better yet, some Pumpkin Delight from The Pub (pumpkin cheesecake + pumpkin pie=heaven.)

What's your favorite Thanksgiving food?