With Thanksgiving coming, time to consider what's on the menu.

Turkey I really like turkey, so sad to say we won't be having any this year. We'll be making another round with capon this holiday, after the one at Christmas went so well. In some ways, poultry is poultry, but there's little I enjoy more than picking over the caracss the day after.

I would highly recommend either the brining method that Alton Brown displays on Good Eats, or the deep fried turkey.

Potato Mashed regular potato is the traditional choice, but there are a ton of options, especially if you include the sweet potato here. I don't care for the sweet potato much, so I'll pass on the varieties available there (unless you include them in the mashed root vegetable concoction that Emeril had on one of his shows, which I've made a couple of times and like.

Sarah's mom makes roasted potatoes, and I really like those. They pretty much drive the idea of mashed right out of my head.

Veggies It's pretty much all good here, from the green bean casserole straight out of the 1950s to plain old boiled carrots. I'm not much of a squash fan (outside of the yellow summer squash), but can work through it if it's savory (sweetly spiced ones don't go down well).

Given my druthers I'd go with the casserole and baby peas. Carrots are fine, regular green beans too. Corn would be traditional, of course. Even some less traditional veggies, like broccoli, brussels sprouts, or asparagus would be fine. Some of the more regional veggies, like okra, maybe not. Unless you fried it with the turkey.

Sarah's mom will usually roast some onions with the potatoes. That's very good.

Stuffing Of course. As long as it doesn't have oysters I'm on board. Sarah's mom makes a wet stuffing using sausage meat (the British thing), and while it's very good it gets its name of "deadly stuffing" for a reason.

Breads Rolls favored to loaf, both favored to cornbread, which I've started to relegate to the barbecue ghetto. But I'd eat whichever appears on my plate.

Relish tray When we ate at my grandmother's, she always had a relish tray set out with a variety of goodies, including deviled eggs, celery and cream cheese, olives, gherkins, pickled tomatoes, etc. It worked as both appetizers and palate cleansers. I've never cared for sweet pickles, but otherwise was open to any of this.

Dessert I'm not big on pumpkin pie. I have one piece every 3 or 4 years and it pretty much takes care of things. I favor fruit pies more often than not. My mom was a mincemeat fan, the only one in the family, so she had that pie all to herself (which generally meant she ate one piece and the rest of the pie disappeared somehow, probably by being tossed or brought to the nursing home she worked at to share).

Other desserts would work, too. Like many of the foods here, I'm not one to turn down dessert unless it's something I really don't care for (maple walnut ice cream, for example).

I only remember eating out for Thanksgiving once, and even then it was at the restaurant of a family friend who closed for the day to have family and friends in. I was very young (under 10), and don't remember too much about it. Which is probably why I consider eating out on Thanksgiving kind of a cop out, within limits (you're alone and don't want to fire up an 18 pound bird, etc.).

Football Duh. We used to listen to local coverage of high school games while driving over to my grandmother's, watch NFl over there, and finish up with scores and highlights at home.

We only played one Thanksgiving day game during my time on the team. We went down to Holbrook to play them, and it wound up being my first varsity start (regular starter suspended for a game after being goaded into a fight by a player on our arch-rivals, Georgetown High School). I didn't do too much; it was pouring rain and the Holbrook offense ran behind the one guy on their offensive line who weighed over 160. I was at defensive tackle on the other side, and they ran about 3 plays my way. They all ended with gang tackling by the mighty Manchester Hornets defense, so not much business. Still, it was fun. Until I got to dinner and bit the inside of my lip three or four times because I was tired.

They've since moved the Manchester-Georgetown game to Thanksgiving, which is where it should have been all along. Should the Hornets win this year they'd be off to their second state title game in three years, so let's keep our fingers crossed.