A Very American Thanksgiving

One of my co-workers is Irish. She is having her first Thanksgiving this year! (Can you imagine?!) She and her Irish friends will be celebrating with a turkey, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie, and other sides. She was curious if I knew any "very American" Thanksgiving dishes. At first I was confused since Thanksgiving is obviously very American, but after she explained that turkey and mashed potatoes are more westernized world cuisine than exclusively American, I got what she meant.

That got me thinking and I put together a bit of a list of five "very American" Thanksgiving dishes. As it turns out, most feel right out of the 1950's or 60's. Take a look for yourself (and feel free to comment if you have others. I'm very curious!)...


1. Sweet Potato Casserole
Only Americans would take the sweetest vegetable and put marshmallows on top of it. The one above also has cornflakes too! I'm actually kind of intrigued.

2. Green Bean Casserole

Green beans--normal. Cream of mushroom soup--mostly normal (although less so on green beans). Funyuns--that's where this casserole gets crazy (even though I love this dish when I eat it!). 

3. Pear Jello Ring
This recipe is probably exclusive to my mom's side of the family, but we always have this for Thanksgiving... even if it looks like it's for Christmas. I don't eat it anymore because gelatin (also jello kind of weirds me out now), but this was one of my favorite parts of Thanksgiving growing up.

4. Canned Cranberry Jelly

Both sides of my family rarely have this anymore because we figured out better ways to eat cranberries with our meal (see here or here), but I did grow up on this stuff at Thanksgiving. 

5. Gluten-Free Rolls

Because non-celiac Americans and their obsession with gluten-free. ;p