American Thanksgiving. I love it! When I was a very broke youngster it made me happy that people were cooking for me, and also that there was no gift-giving. I didn’t have to watch my mom try to hide her cringing as she opened one of my ceramic "artworks."

Mom: Is this a hippo...or an ashtray?

Me: It’s a bouquet of flowers!

Mom: Oh. I love it.

Ah well. But now that I am an adult, I have Thanksgiving of my own, or as we call it, "Fangsgiving," because we are strong believers into incorporating more rabid attacks into every festive occasion.

Remember when Turducken was all the rage? And some people have worked the "trend" that was deep-frying turkeys into their ritual permanently. I wondered what was hot for ol’ Fangsgiving this year, and I discovered it’s all about Keepin’ It Local. Kind of makes sense, right? I assume the first Thanksgiving was about as local as they come. If those crazy Pilgrims had a pipeline to some South American bananas I’m sure they would have been chowing down on them, instead of eagle. Mmm, scavenger bird. Nom nom nom.

So what is the "Eat Local Thanksgiving" movement all about? It’s sort of an offshoot of the larger "eat local" movement. Some people choose a distance, like 100 miles, and have pledged not to buy or eat food that comes from farther away. One benefit of participating is that you are supporting your local farmers and economy. The drawback is if you live someplace cold, then...dear GOD, there’s no chocolate. How will I live without my giant chocolate turkey centerpiece, I ask you?

But I think it’s an interesting idea, and worth trying out. I have heard that the difficulty in my area (Pacific Northwest) is that there’s a shortage of local turkeys.

If you are curious, here is some more infos from my neck of the woods and elsewhere:

Strategies for keeping it local in the PNW, as an example
Seattle Tilth offers local recipes
100 Mile Diet Thanksgiving
Eat local Thanksgiving in Columbus, Ohio
Nina Smith blogs here about eating local

And while you are stuffing yourself silly with local or international foods, meaty or vegetarian, I found a great list of Thanksgiving movies—a neglected genre, in my opinion.

Finally, we must not forget that for every season, there is a macro site: LOLgrims. The image at the beginning of this post is from there. I am thankful for this. Enjoy!