Turkey or Ham for Thanksgiving?

Mara here:

So yesterday was Thanksgiving.

I actually visited my parents for a couple of days and then my daughter and I flew home early Thanksgiving morning to spend the rest of the day with my husband. In a moment of madness a month ago, I thought that catching a 6:30 a.m. flight was a smart thing to do. We'd get home early and there would be a much smaller likelihood of getting delayed.

However, faced with the actual prospect of having to deal with my teenager at 5:00 a.m. to get her to the airport made me rethink that decision.

Let's just focus on the good things.

Turkey. I love turkey. I love the turkey wings. I love the whole idea of eating turkey on Thanksgiving. I even love the turkey leftovers. I think to myself every year that I might make turkey soup. It hasn't happened yet, but it might.

So it was very confusing to me when I married my husband and he asked me if we were going to have turkey or ham on Thanksgiving.

Um, what?

I had never heard of not eating turkey on Thanksgiving. I didn't even know that was an option. If you have ham there's no carving of the turkey. There's no wishbone. There's no turkey sandwiches.

How can there be no turkey?

Apparently, lots of people prefer other meats to turkey at Thanksgiving. I am suspicious of these people, but they do exist.

My husband loves ham. It's not that he minds having turkey. He likes turkey. But given the choice, he'd probably pick ham over turkey. And I'd probably agree with him on every other day of the year...but not on Thanksgiving.

Here's a funny story about when we were living in London. One of our local friends very kindly hosted a Thanksgiving dinner for us. It was surprisingly strange to be living somewhere where Thanksgiving wasn't celebrated.

So we arrived at our friend's house and one of the dishes served was a root vegetable medley. He wanted to know if that was a common dish because he had looked up "American Thanksgiving Meal" and that's what had popped up. We sheepishly admitted that "No, we don't usually eat root vegetables on Thanksgiving." I can only guess that he was looking at Martha Stewart's menu for a colonial American meal. The dish was delicious and it was such a sweet gesture. We were so thankful for his friendship.

This year we made a turkey because, although I no longer insist there be turkey, I prefer it. It always gets my vote.

So what about you? Do you prefer turkey, ham or something else for Thanksgiving?

My mom and I are so thankful to everyone who takes the time to spend a few moments reading our blog. We hope everyone had a wonderful day!!