Thanksgiving 2005 At Home With Family

Did you know? - Traditional Thanksgiving foods are sometimes specific to the day, and although some of the foods might be seen at any semi-formal meal in the United States, the meal often has something of a ritual or traditional quality. Many Americans would say it's "incomplete" without cranberry sauce, stuffing, and gravy. Other commonly served dishes include sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, dumplings, corn on the cob, green beans or green bean casserole, peas and carrots, bread rolls, and a Waldorf salad. For dessert, various pies are often served, particularly apple pie, mincemeat pie, sweet potato pie, pumpkin pie, and pecan pie, with the last three being particularly American.

Did you know? - Most Thanksgiving turkeys are stuffed with bread crumbs and roasted. Sage is the traditional herb added to the stuffing (also called dressing), along with chopped celery and onions. Turducken, a turkey stuffed with a duck stuffed with a chicken, is becoming more popular, from its Cajun base in Louisiana. Deep-fried turkey is rising in popularity as well, requiring special fryers to hold the large bird, and reportedly leading to fires and bad burns for those who fail to take care when dealing with a large quantity of very hot oil. In more recent years it is also true that as the wild population of turkeys has rebounded in most of the US, some will hunt and dress their turkey in the woods and then freeze it until meal preparation.

The use of the turkey in the USA for Thanksgiving relates back to Lincoln's nationalization of the holiday in 1863. Since a turkey could feed more than a chicken, those were sent to the troops instead as a more cost-effective feast.

Did you know? - Cannibalism (from Caníbalis, the Spanish name for the Carib people, a West Indies tribe well known for their practice of cannibalism), is the act or practice of humans eating the flesh of other human beings. It is also called anthropophagy. A person who practices cannibalism is called a cannibal.

While the expression "cannibalism" has origins in the act of humans eating other humans, it has extended into zoology to mean the act of any animal consuming members of its own type or kind, including the consumption of mates