Is Anyone Going to Say the Truth About Thanksgiving Food?

I am prepared for all kinds of hate mail. However, I don't know if I'll get that much.

I think I am about to say what we have all been thinking for years...

Thanksgiving food is not THAT good. More importantly, I would love a Thanksgiving meal with food that everyone LOVES. I'm talking lobster, steak, mac and cheese, calzones, pizza, Chinese, pretty much anything besides turkey, cranberry sauce, and green bean casserole.

Okay, take a deep breath if you love Thanksgiving food. It's going to be okay.

I have this debate with people every year when Thanksgiving rolls around. People will always assure me that they LOVE Thanksgiving food.

I always respond with this question: how often do you eat turkey, cranberry sauce, and all of the other Thanksgiving food staples outside of Thanksgiving? MAYBE twice a year. IF THAT.

For 90% of people, it is never. People do not eat Thanksgiving food outside of the holiday. For those 10% who do in fact eat these foods outside of November, you probably do like it. To each their own.

For anyone who only eats Thanksgiving food on Thanksgiving, you do not like it that much. If you did, you would eat it more.

And shouldn't we just eat what we WANT at holiday gatherings? If my family switched to lobster rolls on Thanksgiving, I would be overjoyed.

But it's tradition. Is it? Are you sure about that?

According to a History.com article, Thanksgiving dates back to November 1621, when the newly arrived Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Indians gathered at Plymouth for an autumn harvest feast, an event regarded as America’s “first Thanksgiving.”

Along with harvested vegetables, "Culinary historians believe that much of the Thanksgiving meal consisted of seafood, which is often absent from today’s menus," according to History.com.

Why? Because that is what was available on the shore. Colonist Edward Winslow describes the bounty of seafood near Plymouth:

“Our bay is full of lobsters all the summer and affordeth variety of other fish; in September we can take a hogshead of eels in a night with small labor, and can dig them out of their beds all the winter. We have mussels... at our doors. Oysters we have none near, but we can have them brought by the Indians when we will.”

So let's do lobster in New England! And if not that, let's just start our own traditions. Eat what your family likes, not a set menu that people poke around and end up dumping into the trash.

That's my take. I'm sure I'll get some heat for it, and I am ready for it.

But just think. Before you write the angry comments, do you really LOVE Thanksgiving food? Or do you just like a long weekend, football, and Black Friday, and are used to eating the (fake) "traditional" meal?