The feast

So the Addingtons decided to make Thanksgiving a little simpler this year. We ate off paper plates and only had 15 dishes to choose from. Count 'em: Deep-fried turkey, ham, chicken stuffing with gravy (a recipe that requires a full dozen eggs), squash casserole, Granny’s famous macaroni and cheese, green beans, creamed corn, creamed potatoes, broccoli slaw, cranberry sauce, cornbread muffins, peanut butter pie, pumpkin pie, cheesecake and brownies.

If you want a sampling of everything on your plate, you have to stick with 2 tablespoons or less of each item – and save dessert for round two.

But perhaps the most sinful offering is the fried turkey, which is about 10 times as moist as traditional bird. It takes 5 gallons of peanut oil to fry a turkey, so you don't want to make it a staple in your diet but we've all managed to survive an annual indulgence. For the past two years, cousin-in-law Bragg (looking slightly glum on the left here) has graciously fried the bird for us. This time he slipped on some spilled grease as he was trying to manage a little pot-fire and nearly overturned the whole pot full of bird and boiling oil on himself. Luckily just a little patch of arm got some minor scalding, but his wife (Rob's cousin Jessica) was plenty shaken by the little dance with death he performed right before her eyes. She swears this will be our last fried turkey EVER. But Bragg’s already shopping for bigger “safer” pots in his mind.

Will inhaled cornbread muffin (see cornbread-stuffed cheeks below), ham, green beans, stuffing and peanut butter pie and left the rest for scavengers like me, who feel obliged to spare good food from trash-can doom. This is a little bit of Thanksgiving morality I picked up long ago from my dad.

Owen, who I think may favor my dad just a bit, already has a big appetite. Here he is anticipating the day when he too can eat real food.