Thanksgiving Dinner

There were no beautiful centerpieces or long-simmering family squabbles at the first Thanksgiving in 1621 Plymouth, then the Pilgrims decided not to fast but instead to party with the Wampanoag tribe. Today, they forego the venison they undoubtedly consumed, and they compress their three days of eating into one gluttonous gorge.

Nothing beats the quintessential all-American meal of turkey (roasted or deep-fried bird, tofurkey, or that strangely popular Louisiana contribution turducken), dressing (old loaf bread or cornbread, onion and celery, sausage, fruit, chestnuts, oysters – whatever your mom did, the sage was the thing), cranberry sauce, mashed and sweet potatoes, that funky green bean casserole with the French-fried onion rings on top, and pumpkin.

The turkey TV supper, created in 1953 by a Swanson salesman needing to utilize up 260 overestimated tons of frozen turkeys, is almost as iconic (and, according to most kids, as delicious). He got the idea from neatly packaged aircraft food, he claimed.