Turkey time is upon us again

But not for everybody.

No, I’m not talking about people too poor to afford a turkey dinner with all the trimmings. This isn’t a blog about helping out those less fortunate; that’s between people and their own consciences. I’m talking about the folks who don’t particularly care for turkey.

My husband is one of them. It was always our job to host Thanksgiving dinner, and we dutifully served turkey year in and year out, with a ham on the side. My father, aghast at the "hack job" we did slicing the thing (something I never understood; it was dead already, right?), started bringing his electric carving knife, and it became his job to carve the bird.

Two years after my father passed, the family was sitting around talking about the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday. My brother-in-law, who hails from Nassau, Bahamas, commented that he would be just as happy eating a dinner of, say, shrimp, admitting that he wasn’t too crazy about turkey. My husband said the same thing, but that instead of shrimp his first choice would be catfish.

That year we served our first Thanksgiving dinner consisting of fried whole catfish and boiled shrimp with different sauces. We had the cornbread dressing and the gravy, the green bean casserole, the greens, candied yams, macaroni and cheese, cranberry sauce, and rolls, just no turkey or ham.

For most of the years since that was our annual banquet, with an occasional turkey fried out on the patio, a nice change from roasted that my husband, as well as my brother-in-law, approved of.

This year, my husband and I are living in a small apartment eleven hundred miles away from our home in Florida, which is now inhabited by rental tenants while my husband works here in the Midwest. Fortunately, we have family an hour-and-a-half away and more family four hours away. But we’ve opted to stay home for a quiet Thanksgiving, because my husband has to work the day after, and because the period between mid-December and the rest of the year will be hectic, with lots of travel. The menu? Stuffed Cornish hens, macaroni and cheese, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, and biscuits. One meat, two starches (three if you count the biscuits,) one vegetable, and one fruit. That’s plenty of food for two people. We’ll have a nice meal, chill out, and maybe I’ll drag him with me to the early opening of the stores on Friday morning.

Four glorious days off from my present temp assignment. I can’t wait.

What about you? Is your holiday traditional, or non-traditional, whether related to menu or other aspects?