The French say, “First, you taste with the eyes.”
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And Eric says, “Last, you taste the dessert.” 
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
Is that all you’re eating? Are you trying to lose weight? Just wait for my pics… I have a team of professional cooks on the clock this time…
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This was just the main course. For an appetizer I had 3 shrimp cocktails and 4 deviled eggs and several tortilla wrap thing, then I ate all this, then I cleaned about 7 or 8 jumbo shrimp off my wife and daughters plate. Then I had a nice apple pie and some butter pecan ice cream.
10u of novolog and 20 of afrezza so far… hasn’t been a total disaster, I haven’t seen anything above 170ish… although I’m still correcting 5 hours later (which isn’t that surprising with afrezza corrections since they’re only active for about an hour each). I could have used less insulin, but that would have required some booze, which I couldn’t have this year…
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Excuse my (European) ignorance, but is there any difference between Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners or is Thanksgiving just the final rehearsal before Christmas? 
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Thanksgiving is more just about massive amounts of food… its pretty much the whole point of the holiday, whereas with Christmas the meal is just an added perk
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We don’t really have a ‘special meal’ during Christmas…just whatever we’re eating for the day. Thanksgiving, on the other hand, is the one meal of the year that everyone goes all out and makes those favorite casseroles, baked dishes and of course lots of Turkey, Ham and other assorted meats.
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@Boerenkool, @Sam and @ClaudnDaye did a truly terrible job at educating you on the major differences between the dinners at Thanksgiving (which some Native Americans call Thankstaking) and Christmas, (which, as you probably know, should likely be celebrated in September). So I see I have to greatly supplement their information.
As @Sam explained, the Xmas dinner is really an extra: the main focus of the day is the gifts. The meal, well… it just has to be large, rich, and difficult to digest.
The Thanksgiving meal, on the other hand, is the primary attraction of the day, and, as @ClaudnDaye hinted, followed a very precise ritual, including specific dishes that MUST be there. In the same way as the Jews celebrate a precise ritual for Passover, which varies depending exactly upon where your family came from, but which is invariable every year, the Thanksgiving dinner must follow its own extraordinary specific rules, that vary depending upon your family, but that must followed TO A T. I will give a brief summary of the mainstays that are generally accepted (although there are exceptions):
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The primary meat must be a turkey, in general presented whole
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There must be large quantities of rich mashed potatoes. Different sects of Thankstakers have different beliefs as to exactly how they must be made. Some, for instance, believe that they must be chunky. Others believe they must be smooth. Each Thankstaking sect excommunicates the others. Almost all, however, believe that the ratio of potato to butter should be about 1:1 on that holy day
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There must be gravy, turkey gravy, in large quantities. Most Thankstaking sects excommunicate those heretics who buy the gravy already made. In some families, a part of the ritual involves some of the cooks crying after burning the gravy, or spoiling it in some other way. Not having gravy at Thankstaking is a criminal offense in America (and certainly for my wife).
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The dinner must finish with pumpkin pie, a sweet pie with a very thick layer of cooked pumpkin, with large quantities of cinnamon (do remember that American cinnamon is NOT the cinnamon that you know in Europe, which comes from Ceylan, but a different plant, much stronger but less subtle, coming typically from China, made from Cassia plants).
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Most families believe that you must have table decorations of Native American corn and small decorative gourds and pumpkins.
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And, last but not least, the eating on Thanksgiving must be followed by a week long of turkey sandwiches and leftovers, which are as almost important as the original day
You can see, @Boerenkool, that the ritual is critical! Many a family has fallen apart over disagreements on Thankstaking theology. As for me, it may well be my very favorite celebration 
The food is great, everybody is happy, and, somehow, every year adds to the previous years’ wonderful memories to aggregate a fabulous aura of what Thanksgiving means!
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Maybe I missed it, @Michel, but I think you forgot to mention family… Even though I don’t always like mine, I can’t imagine these holidays without them. 
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Thanksgiving became much more fun when we got the elders to start drinking alcohol. That greased the skids enough to lighten people up to get to the “wonderful memories” of which @Michel speaks…at least that’s been discovered to work in my family. They were totally dry my entire childhood, which is fine, but a little social lubrication goes a long way with my genetic crowd.
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I’m not sure they’d be all that flattered by this comment… can’t put my finger on it, but…
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I’m plagued by honesty.
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Thanks for that excellent explanation! 
I was under the impression that Christmas dinners were very similar.
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I feel like my general idea on thanksgiving meals: Eat a ton of carbs . Like mashed potatoes and baked casseroles and goodies that you don’t eat every day, just eff it eat it all. I don’t eat meat though …but in no way am I against others doing it and I feel like there’s nothing wrong with the turkey on the table if that makes everyone else happy, granted we didn’t have that this year because me and my fiance are broke and it’d just be me in him, so he made holiday style turkey burgers for himself? Hey it worked! We still had like mashed potatoes, corn, dinner rolls, a buncha traditional thanksgiving sides we got from other people who bring us stuff to be nice, and pumpkin pie. Hey it worked out, my blood sugar was 106 before it and 108 after it I feel like a boss even though I ate way too many dinner rolls and too much mashed potatoes I am surprised I fit the big hunk of pumpkin pie in there. I took a huge pre meal insulin dose though so that’s prolly why I survived it. Had some left overs but ate all the potatoes last night…so went for cheese broccoli rice with it instead. That was yummy. No pics but it’s like broke as hell thanksgiving, not nearly as exciting as y’alls pics lol.
Christmas on the other hand depends on what is going on and who’s house we’re at. Sometimes it’s appetizers, finger food, and a small meal or a bunch of Christmas cookies and candy or if I’m at my aunts house there’s a bigger meal and everyone gets drunk except for me so there’s that.
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Oh my goodness! You have forgotten the dividing factor of America!!! The stuffing verses dressing debate! How could you @Michel?!?
Is it put in the bird? In a pan? Does it have just bread, eggs, celery, onions, and a dash of milk and chicken stock? OR do you put olives, oysters, cranberries, or some other disgusting thing in there?! Or, are you of the Martha Stewart type and you spend a week finding the most bespoke bread and three different kinds of mushrooms that cost more money than you knew that type of mushrooms could cost, and then spend half a day concocting the best “casserole” that can be created only to find that it’s not that amazing? Or are you a Mrs. Cubbisons or Stove Top type?!?!?
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I abjectly ask for forgiveness, you are totally right. How could I forget? Clearly this alone would rule me out for asylum…
This @Boerenkool, may be the greatest Thanksgiving debate of all: what kind of stuffing to you cook, and, possibly even more important, how do you cook it?
This very debate, @Boerenkool, is why the death rate goes up significantly on the night of Thanksgiving: not, as many believe, because of the heart attacks caused by too rich a food (how could it be, since turkey is healthy white meat low on saturated fats after all? And butter has never killed anyone…), but because of the apoplectic attacks caused by the vicious debates over how to cook the stuffing.
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Well. We are facing a significant quandary. I just picked up the turkey (as you know, we here are celebrating Thanksgiving today) and, instead of giving me an 18 lb turkey as ordered, the butcher gave me a 25 lb turkey. It won’t fit in the oven…
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Separate the breast from the legs, roast the legs separately for stew or stock…
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Should have thought of that!
We played around with it until we could cram it in by pushing down really hard 
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That’s huge! How long will it take to cook that?
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We stopped roasting the turkey around 6:00pm, after putting it in around 11:30am: 6.5 hours!
Here is what it looked like right before we ate it:
It was phenomenal! We are all entering food coma right now: turkey, peas, gravy, mashed potatoes, fabulous home made stuffing with country French bread, celery, onion, spices, amazing gelled strawberry and pecan salad, persimmons in ponegranate jam…
We just cleaned everything, put away 2 huge tupperwares of turkey, sent my son over to our local American friends with a bunch of turkey leftovers, and now I feel like I don’t want to move a limb… I told my wife if we can celebrate Thanksgiving like that abroad we never need to come back!
Now we are looking at my son’s BG wondering what will happen tonight. Better than a Hitchcock suspense movie
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