Yes, I'm thankful, but I'm still not cooking......

People need to get over themselves and get off my back about Thanksgiving.

I don't do Thanksgiving. I think it's a lovely holiday, but I see no need to celebrate it with a table full of food and tons of leftovers that will go bad. Call me a spendthrift, but I'd rather have the money in my wallet instead of my trash can.

Look, it's just my daughter and me. It's been that way forever. On Thanksgivings where I had worked the night before, my daughter would go out for Thanksgiving with my parents (my mother gave up cooking massive amounts of food years ago -- smart lady). I'd sleep while they all went out and chowed down. I never felt like I'd missed anything; probably because I was so sleep deprived that the last thing I wanted was a room full of people. This is the first year in a very long time that I could cook if I wanted to. But I'm not gonna....

My daughter and I rarely do the big dinner thing. Big dinner, to us, means more than three things on the plate; our normal is two. Four is way too much, because at that point, you're just stuffing yourself. And my question for those that would say: "but that's what you're supposed to do at Thanksgiving," is "why?" Because indigestion feels good?

I wonder if the average Joe knows that nurses on cardiac units expect a slew of new admissions the night of Thanksgiving because people have chosen to "stuff themselves" and they've subsequently developed chest pain. This is one reason I don't overdo it. The second reason I don't cook a big meal.... my daughter rarely eats leftovers. It has to be something REALLY good for her to touch it the next day. Leftover pasta and pizza are her favorites. She doesn't eat noodles, cranberry sauce or green bean casserole. Stuffing is a sometime thing -- she won't eat it if another starch is served. If sweet potatoes are served, she won't touch mashed. She's not a big fan of dinner rolls either, and neither of us likes gravy. If she does happen to eat a leftover, she'll eat it once after the original serving. After day two, she wants new tastes. Who doesn't? 

So basically our Thanksgiving dinner would consist of:

• 4 servings of turkey (we'll both eat leftovers)
• 2 servings of sweet potatoes (I'm not a fan, so she gets them all)
• 1 serving of mashed potatoes (that's mine)
• 1 serving of cranberry sauce (mine again)
• plate of raw vegetables or a salad

The thing is, we eat this stuff year round. We eat turkey once or twice a week and raw vegetables or salad once daily. The other stuff is sprinkled throughout our month with stuffing thrown in a few times a year (when we're not having another starch, of course.) Sitting down at a table and eating the same things that we eat throughout the year, or just had last week, isn't special. We aren't any more thankful on that day than any other. My family doesn't do the big holiday sit-down dinner because no one sticks around after the dinner. We don't have little kids in the family running around screaming and wanting to play because they haven't seen each other in ages. We have adults wondering "do you have time to change the oil in my car this weekend?" We don't have kids or adults into video games or even, the football game. We have adults, with adult things to do, like splitting wood, laundry, home repairs, car repairs or work. Gone are the days where everything in America stopped on Thanksgiving; stores are open. Many of us are planning to start our shopping at midnight or 2 a.m. so we can get the best deals on gifts. We don't want to be traipsing around house to house, stuffing ourselves and ending up in the ER. Most of the time, no one sticks around for pumpkin pie because we're adding it more to our diet anyway because it's a superfood. Again, it's not special.

In my family, we don't have in-laws that we have to visit or children that we have to shuttle between parents. My immediate family members all live within 7 miles of each other; we cross paths constantly and see each other more out-and-about than we do at our respective homes. We don't have any grandparents we need to visit anymore; they're long gone. Everyone we would normally see at a big family get-together at Thanksgiving, we visit several times a year. Everyone has downsized their homes, and no one could hold the big dinner anyway, unless we were sitting in the back yard on lawnchairs. As my extended family ages, and people need special diets, many can't eat the normal fare and have to opt for eating more like rabbits with a little protein thrown in. Yet one more reason that the big dinner doesn't work for my family. 

I understand that many people look forward to the Thanksgiving holiday, but for me and my daughter, it's just another day. I've raised her not to believe that the holidays are an excuse to eat. Still, she's looking forward to the day when she makes the turkey for her family. Fabulous. I hope she convinces her husband to cook the rest of the stuff, because she's already said she'll only make sweet potatoes and the turkey. See? Two things.