[Urbane Guerrilla]

We're none too rigidly fixed about our menu, so long as it is, sine qua non, a feast.

We once hit an Indian place a couple Thanksgivings ago for tandoori turkey. It was plenty good, but somehow for me didn't quite hit the spot; it didn't seem Thanksgiving-ish enough somehow.

But a whole roast turkey is best for carcass-pickin' to make turkey & dressing sandwiches until you're tired of the things a week later, with a good tablespoon's worth of cranberry jelly laid in. These work best with bread-and-sage dressing, and we always use whole wheat bread for this.

The stripped turkey carcass is used to make chicken stock. I often concentrate this stuff well enough for it to be softly gelatinous.

We like cornbread dressing just fine, and could probably do something pretty marvelous based on quinoa, but sage/bread dressing still tops them all. Chopped pecans can go well in cornbread stuffing, if you have any left after a good'n'proper pecan pie. A large enough turkey can have a worthwhile amount of two kinds of stuffing, one in each cavity, with any extra baked, covered in a dish. Stuffing is best when it is quite moist with butter and broth.

Our family likes both kinds of cranberry jelly, and served 'em both together. The canned stuff -- and we like to lay it on with the can's rings visible on the jellied burgundy-colored cylinder -- suits sandwich-making best for obvious reasons.

The wife thinks candied or marshmallow-topped and candied yams/sweet potatoes should be a dessert dish. For me, they're just how you have them done up extra special. She, uh, rather lacks a sweet tooth, from my point of view.

She won't have anything with mayonnaise in it. Mmmmmooookayyyyy.... it's a quirk. Sounds like carrot-and-raisin salad is not a likelihood, then. I think real mayonnaise isn't the stuff to use to make C&R salad, anyway: it's better using Miracle Whip. Unless the secret with the mayo is to add sugar to sweeten.

Soups we don't usually do for this meal, as we'd rather fill up on something more chewy; it being a feast, favorite vegetables are used, which usually means peas unless somebody just has to make green bean casserole, roofed with Tater Tots. You can get more Tater Tots into a casserole if you peg 'em into it endwise rather than just pouring them on top. The garlic-flavored kind are worth using. Doubtless some minced garlic mixed into the concentrated cream of mushroom soup and the green beans would work as well.

Mashed potatoes, of course. Baked sweet potatoes one way or another, those too. Bread and butter, or dinner rolls, and probably as special and nice as may be -- King's Hawaiian Rolls, or something.

Among the crudite`s, celery sticks and black olives are perennial.

Desserts could be anything, and usually several things to choose from. Of pies, there should at least be pumpkin. Mince is usually a given. I've gone as far as lemon meringue pie with graham cracker crumb crust (homemade is the only way proper for a great feast!), making it at the friends' house we'd come to Thanksgiving dinner for, as its meringue does not travel well -- vibrations break it down into a sweet, egg-white fluid again -- a bit of this does nice things for the crumb crust, but too much turns pretty sloppy and the sugar content makes it sticky too. Favorite cakes may also put in their appearance. Chocolate Vienna Torte, or a rather formidable thing with a coffee-flavored cream frosting that I haven't made recently enough to recall the name of, but oh so delicious.