How is Thanksgiving celebrated in the US?

Brian Thacker has been living in the States for five years and experienced every type of ‘Thanksgiving’ the country has to offer. This year, it’s celebrated on November 28. Is that what I think it is? It can’t be.

I’m having my first Thanksgiving with my wife’s family in Minnesota, and on the dining room table next to the tray of mac ‘n’ cheese (which is more cheese than mac) is a big bowl of sweet potatoes with, wait for it ...

melted marshmallows on top. What are they going to put on the roast turkey? M&Ms? Thankfully, the roast turkey came out and it was just a roast turkey, but then I must feign delight when I try the pride of the mid-west: the green bean casserole. It’s like something from a 1970s Kaftan Dinner Party Cookbook.

Here’s the recipe: Mix a can of fluorescent green beans with Campbells cream of mushroom soup and cover with a whole packet of French-fried onions (that have a use-by date somewhere in the 2040s) then chuck it into the oven until it’s perfectly soggy. So, if marshmallows are a side dish, it makes perfect sense to use pumpkins for dessert. Admittedly, I do love pumpkin pie, although I did skip the very popular Cool Whip on top.

The ingredients sound like a science experiment. What happens if we mix polysorbate 60, sorbitan monostearate and sodium polyphosphate together? The star of the show, however, is the turkey. And Thanksgiving isn’t Thanksgiving without serving up a giant roast bird that the leftovers will be used for tu.