Rising prices, so let’s bail on traditional Thanksgiving food

Could this be my year? Maybe this could be the year. My whole life I've been trying to convince people not to be such conformists when it comes to Thanksgiving food.

Listen, it's a great holiday. You have many lucky people with four-day weekends. Three of those four follow the gathering day so there's tons of recovery time. (Recovery not just from stuffing yourself but also from all that quantity time you spend with family.) You have football to watch. The Christmas season to start embracing.

This is not an attack on Thanksgiving. This is an attack on the terrible traditional food.

Yes, I said terrible.

If you have a great cook in your circle who knows how to serve up a juicy, tender, and still warm turkey when it comes time to actually eat it, good for you. I envy you, for I never have.

Regardless of whose home I've spent Thanksgiving at, it's always the same. Turkey that is dried out. Turkey that is cold. Turkey that is, well, eaten only to be polite.

This year with rising prices maybe people will start to rethink the traditional fare. Turkey supply has been reduced due to avian flu. California drought has limited vegetable yields. Prices are soaring.

In some parts of the country where turkey was $1.15 a pound last year, it's now $1.99 a pound this year. Fruits and vegetables are up 19%. Potatoes are up 18%.

It's a lot of money to spend on inedible food.

Yes, I'm standing by that.

Sure I know it was a New Jersey woman who invented the green bean casserole as a way to come up with a recipe for her employer the Campbell Soup Co. That doesn't mean it's not garbage just because it was dreamed up here. We're known for chemical plants and landfills too. See where I'm going with that?

And canned cranberry sauce? The way it makes that alien, gastric, sucking sound as it plops out of the confines of its container? Are we supposed to be hungry after hearing that?

Mashed potatoes. You know what my grandmother used to call her mashed potatoes? Cold lumps. Oh wait, that's what we called it, sorry.

I could go on but you're probably already mad at me. You probably think I'm somehow un-American. (If so, keep in mind Benjamin Franklin would have been horrified to know we're eating the bird he wanted as our national symbol.)

Look, you do you. All I'm saying is beef Wellington wouldn't hurt for a change and it's actually delicious. Or a porterhouse. Seriously, I'd even settle for a Wawa hoagie or a Manco & Manco pizza for Thanksgiving. I'd be good with that. No. I'd freaking LOVE that.

Who am I kidding? I'll never win this battle. Twenty million green bean casseroles are served every year at Thanksgiving. And there aren't enough dogs under tables to solve this problem.

Opinions expressed in the post above are those of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Jeff Deminski only.

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