Thanksgiving is such a great day! It's a time to snack, eat and snack some more! People plan their Thanksgiving Feasts for weeks in advance just so the big day is perfect! It's a day of parades, family, relaxing and football for the sports fans out there. Thanksgiving is celebrated in the US and Canada. When many of us think of a traditional Thanksgiving Dinner, we think of turkey, drum sticks, wish bones, stuffing, mashed potatoes, turkey gravy, corn, corn bread, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, apple cider and several traditional Thanksgiving Day foods.

The thing about the Thanksgiving Day Feast that is extremely interesting is where we derive "traditional". What is traditional in Hawaii is different from Texas which is different from Maryland.  Although turkey is certainly a common thread among all of the regions on Thanksgiving, there's a lot of regional flavor thrown into the mix. Furthermore, families pass down recipes from generation to generation. While Thanksgiving is indigenous to the United States and Canada, every Region is going to add their own flavor and then every family will have their own style that makes Thanksgiving their own.

Appetizers and side dishes are a great way to bring in other regional flavors to your Thanksgiving experience. Thanksgiving is certainly about giving thanks and celebrating tradition. We encourage you to carry on "tradition". However, we also think it can be a lot of fun to experiment with other regional dishes, especially for children. It really widens the imagination. If you're in Maryland, it can be a lot of fun to add Lau-Lau and discuss what a Thanksgiving in Hawaii might be like. Or, if you're you're in Hawaii, you could add a Maryland favorite and put Crab Dip on the menu and consider what it might be like on the Chesapeake Bay towards the end of the fall.

Consider the most commonly accepted "First Thanksgiving" in Plymouth where the menu was wild fowl, crabs, lobster, eel, fish, corn, watercress and other accessible foods. It's highly unlikely that they had cranberry sauce or pumpkin pie because they didn't have access to sugar. Despite the differences among the various regions that celebrate Thanksgiving, the use of sugar as an ingredient is just as common as having turkey for the main course! The point being that even tradition changes over time, especially when it tastes good!

Since the world has become smaller with the advances of travel, there are more foods accessible in every region and we encourage everyone to have a little fun and experiment a little. We absolutely promote and encourage celebrating your traditions, heritage and history. We believe that's extremely important. We also encourage exploring other traditions and appetizers are a great way to do that!