Mangia! It's Thanksgiving Italian style!

Eating on Thanksgiving the way that we did, I never knew anyone else ate differently. That is until I invited my husband - to- be and my sister-in-law and brother-in-law to share this holiday with my family. They were from Ohio and stationed at Ft. Meade and the AFB in Arlington, VA.

My mother started to cook on a Monday to get ready for Thursday. My father always helped by shooting the oranges full of Vodka with a hypodermic needle. I think this was so he could tolerate all the company which seemed to show up at our house in a suburb of Philadelphia.

First course consisted of Antipasto and Italian bread. Then we would sink our teeth into my mother's homemade raviolis, meatballs and sausage. After filling up on these tasty Italian dishes, she would bring in the il tacchino (turkey), homemade stuffing, mashed potatoes, corn, steamed chestnuts and wine. After we dined on these traditional Thanksgiving foods, we would be served a variety of deserts. From homemade Italian cookies to apple pie, la zucca (pumpkin) pie, coffee and finally spumoni.

When I sat down to dinner, I weighed less than I did when I got up to leave the table at the end of the meal. It would sound like the rumblings of Mt. St. Helen's as everyone's stomach joined in to say, "ENOUGH ALREADY!"

That Thanksgiving, as my soon to be in-laws left to drive back to Virginia, they asked me if we ALWAYS ate like that. I smiled and said, it was a tradition I remembered back to going to my grandmother's house for Thanksgiving since I was 3.

I later found out that on their way back to the base, they both got sick on the side Route 95 south. They had eaten way beyond what their stomachs could hold, all I could think of was my mother finding out they had puked and reprimanding them to send their food to the starving babies somewhere in the world.

Regardless of anything that was going on in the world, Thanksgiving was a time for family and endless dishes of food to come together. To focus on our blessings and pray for the families which were not as blessed as us.

We spent about 7 hours at the table eating and the remainder of the day sleeping in front of the TV munching on chestnuts. God bless and happy Thanksgiving.