Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

As long as my parents were alive my family went to their house for Thanksgiving dinner. It was always great fun; a full day of cooking, watching the parade on tv, telling great stories, having good wine, sneaking bits of turkey in the kitchen as my father carved it. Such delightful memories. One year my kids (37 and 39 now with families of their own) who were 14 and 16 at the time were seated across the table from each other. I was seated next to my daughter, with my son directly opposite her. There was a big table surrouned by family, filled with wonderful food, loud with sounds of laughter and stories. Suddenly my 14 year old son stops smiling and looks horrified. Only my daughter and I had noticed. His hand goes up to his mouth, where he discretely removes some offending morsel. We quietly looked quizically at him and he reached slowly under the table, as did my daughter. Their hands met and he places the item into her hand. She brings her hand up to her lap and opens it and we look down discretely, only to discover bandaid that had been on my mother's finger earlier in the kitchen as she was making the dressing. To all of our credit, no one screamed. We all quietly stopped eating the dressing.