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THE TURKEY SKIN! Duh! We fight for it.

I love all of it. I love the way the house smells at 8am when my roasted giblet stock is simmering and the onions and celery are sauteeing for the dressing. I love the smell of my homegrown sage when I rub it between my hands before throwing it into the bread mixture. I really like my dressing (made with sweet cornbread and dry French bread), my gravy, my cranberry orange dressing, my crescent rolls and my brown sugar-butter sweet potatoes with a teeny splash of rum. The pies, the whipped cream, the shortbread, the walnut fudge, the orange-cranberry muffins, I love sandwiches the next day made with turkey, mayo, swiss cheese and the cranberry sauce. There isn't one thing I don't love about the day.

Sweet potato pie. Never had Pumpkin, never will.
Thanksgiving marks the beginning of sweet potato pie season. I can't wait!

I love eveything about Thanksgiving day starting with all the great smells in the morning, We have turkey, stuffing, gravy, 'green bean casserole', mashed potatoes, creamed onions, turnip (yuck!), glazed carrots, raw cranberry sauce and the 'canned' kind. asorted rolls, corn bread etc, a relish tray, pumpkin cheesecake, Vermont maple pie.

Dressing with gravy . . . mmmm.

Stuffing! I freaking love stuffing - with chunky bread, 3 kinds of spicy sausage, veggies, stock, cognac and brushed with butter before it's baked til crisp.

My mother's homemade buns. I have the same recipe, but they never ever turn out nearly as good as hers. She is famous for them. THey are light and slightly buttery sweet and just the right size for the great cold turkey and ketchup sandwiches that make cooking an entire turkey for only three people a tradition every year. I remember dreaming of them during the rest of the year, but she never makes them except for Thanksgiving. I will never be able to recreate them as well as she does, but only serves to make them all the more specialand delicious!

Probably the dressing although I don't drown mine in gravy like my husband does. He probably goes through 2 cups of gravy over the course of dinner (and the turkey is plenty moist). We've joked about finding an enormous soup plate for him to use so his food can bathe in the gravy.

It's a toss up between gravy and desert. Desert is always a pumpkin pie and a crumb topped apple pie.

Oyster stuffing.

Everything else is gravy.

homemade butter rolls and pumpkin spice cake.

I'm sure I'll take flack for this ... but everything but the turkey. A forkful of mashed potatoes, corn, stuffing, and cranberry sauce all topped off with turkey graving. Heaven.

family. For food it's the stuffing, with gravy and whole cranberry sauce.

My favorite part of Thanksgiving is actually the day after. It's incredible how many cool recipes there are for leftovers.

So I spend Thanksgiving morning cooking - in the afternoon it's family time with a mid afternoon dinner.

Then on Friday it's a whole new ballgame with everything from Turkey enchiladas, soup and chili's to Turkey nachos, turkey stuffed peppers, turkey omelets etc. etc....we feast all weekend!

Then try to loose some weight so we can do it again over Xmas.

Love the holiday season!

i love everything about Thanksgiving... maybe because I was born on a Thanksgiving day a few years ago ;) and it marks the start of Xmas season... it's sucha happy time for me, always.

I used to love the whole menu combination. And would most look forward eating the same menu a few times via the leftovers. and even now that I am vegetarian, I think my favorite part are the sweet potatoes/yams... my mom used to make them with marshmallows on top. YUMMM.

I also love Thanksgiving - it's my favorite holiday, hands down. My favorite food is Mama's dressing. She bakes cornbread separately, sautes onion and celery, breaks up the cornbread and adds the vegetables, chicken broth, and some of the drippings from the turkey pan and then bakes the mixture. Since it never goes inside the turkey, it's not stuffing, but dressing, and it is yummy!
I love how everybody talks about how cozy Thanksgiving is. I absolutely agree and I love the day after, too. Turkey sandwiches on sourdough bread - yum!

@betteirene: You have no idea! We have always done that, actually - both sides of the family - and it's the *best* way of using the leftovers. Now, some people in teh family heat the turkey, but for me, it's nothing but fridge-cold! And just ketchup, too - no mustard, mayo, nothing else, not even butter. And believe me, once you try it you will be a convert! :)

Thanksgiving is my favorite day of the year! Being together with family and friends is the capstone. On the menu we always have the turkey with cornbread stuffing, mashed potatoes, giblet gravy, cranberry sauce, green bean casserole and apple and pecan pies. Since I do most of the cooking, no one beats me to the tail of the bird and if I get that with a good helping of stuffing and giblet gravy, everyone else can split up the remainders.
I'm a sucker for the sandwiches the next day. They've got to be on white bread with mayo, S&P, and some lettuce. I can't remember ever entering the weekend without the carcass being transformed into a turkey noodle soup that lasts until Sunday night. With that kinda bliss, you gotta be thankful.

pumpkin pie! maybe the crescent rolls. i don't really like any of the other food!

My mom's pecan pie.

This year, for the first time in 58 years, we are going out for dinner (no dishes--no clean-up and damn, no left overs.
Here in Little Rock, some of the finer motels have wonderful buffets, all you want for $25 - $30 per person and they pride themselves on the spread. This may end up pretty good! Dave

Melitons stuffed with shrimp. It's a New Orleans thing. Melitons are vegetable pears.

softsecret: you may be right, I know already I'm gonna miss the left overs and the creative things you can do with them for the next week.

Oh I love the whole thing! It's by far my favorite meal to cook. My favorite moment is right when everyone's been served, whole family and friends all around the table, and I'm staring down a plate of turkey and beautiful sides (I do different ones every year), and cranberry sauce, and just about to dig in. The best! I also love making all the desserts and presenting them -- everyone says they're too stuffed, but then they magically finish the desserts anyway. I love it!!!!

My mom's oyster dressing is my favorite part of Thanksgiving. MAN, it is soooo good with gravy poured all over the top. This recipe actually was given to my mom from my paternal grandmother who passed 30 some years ago. My parents have since split, but we still get to enjoy that oyster dressing each year. Actually, there was a movement in my family to retire that recipe several years ago. My mom got remarried to a man with 4 kids. They of course have their own dressing preference. My step-dad is an awesome cook and that first Thanksgiving we all spent together, he prepared a majority of the food and we of course had "THEIR" stuffing. My brother's and sister were mortified! Where was the oyster dressing????? Well, needless to say that was the one and only Thanksgiving with out it. Now we simply have 2 different kinds. Yummy, just talking about it is making me hungry!!!

Mashed potatoes! And the warm homemade yeast rolls (I hear you, Traveller -- mine are not near as good as my father's!), homemade whole cranberry sauce, and pie, pie, pie.

Teachertalk, I love your idea of a secret treat for the cook -- so much so that I'm going to do it this year myself. My father used to very secretively slice off a piece of the thigh from the underside of the bird for he and I to share when no one else was in the kitchen.

homemade cranberry sauce with brandy and walnuts - so easy to make, i make it a few times in fall now - not just for T-day. literally takes 15 minutes to make!

mashed turnips - i know u either love them or hat them, but prepared like mashed potatoes w/ butter, salt & pepper, i find them the ultimate comfort food. they are really fluffy when you mash them

sauteed mushrooms with tons of garlic and olive oil

minced meat pie with mom's whipped brandy cream sauce

i'm noticing a (un?)healthy brandy theme here :) happy Turkey Day!

Mashed potatoes and gravy is my number one, followed closely by stuffing made by me or Aunt Rose.

My brother and I loved Thanksgiving. We would eat so much that my mom would make us lay on the floor and stretch our body out to help the pain in our side from overstuffing, ourselves. Now some family members thought we were just trying to get out of doing the dishes, but mom always gave us the KP duty OFF on thanksgiving, anyway. We just loved her TG food and loved it from beginning to end. We still love it, but do offer better control. ThankGod. coco

Stuffing and gravy! Basically, everything on the plate except for the sweet potatoes takes a bath in gravy, which is just fine by me. And this year I'll be 7 months pregnant when Thanksgiving rolls around, so I feel like my gluttony will be slightly less frowned-upon

@BrewMaker... LOL @ "Sangwich." I looooove that Friday after T-Giving mini-feast. I worked for brokerage for 8 years and that was the LONLIEST day to work. Anticipating that Friday night leftoverfest was the only thing that got me thru a very boring day.

I don't know if anyone else does this - but when I host T-Giving, I make it a point to get plastic containers and offer all my guests a crack at the leftovers. I always make plenty and have never been left without enough for my own family. It seems so bogus that you don't get the Friday post-T-Giving meal if you don't host.

The golden turkey, (dark meat for me!) and lots of gravy and mashed potatoes!

Oh, I am all about the dressing/stuffing and gravy. I add the boiled neck meat to the stuffing and the giblets to the gravy and I am a happy lady. Even though I live in the South, I still make Northern dressing: no cornbread allowed! Though I do like cornbread by itself.

And it is all about the family. I love it when I can cook for mine.

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stuffing doused in gravy!

Stuffing, for sure.

Southern cornbread dressing with gravy and the requisite chocolate pie for dessert.

Oh geez, I can't even choose. Actually no, that's a lie. Hand's down, it's gotta be sweet potato casserole. My aunt makes THE BEST sweet potato casserole. It's equipped with marshmallow, pecans, and a buttload of buttah. (I specifically used the word buttload cause that's exactly where it goes...that's ok though. More to love)

The crispy part of the stuffing smothered in hot gravey! And the perfect sandwhich after everyone goes home. The part I Don't look forward too is the Dog Farts...what part of "don't feed the dog" do people not understand?

Another creative leftover suggestion: pumpernickel bread, cream cheese on bread, avocado, mashed and spread, thin slices of breast, stacked and lettuce. This was the best sandwich I ever had. LA, 1978 at some restaurant. They had named it The" Martha Raye" , after the actress.

@julea
I'm with you - all my friends know that I'll be bringing the "shape of the can" - it has become a minor competition to see who can dump the cranberry sauce out in perfect "can" shape. However, my favorite part is the other thing no one else I know likes but me - mincemeat pie.