Happy Thanksgiving!

You know who's most thankful today? Deer. Because if you read Edward Winslow's account of the first Thanksgiving, he didn't mention turkey by name but he did say that the Pilgrims and the Indians ate venison. Lots and lots of venison. I don't know exactly how the fourth Thursday of November became the Great Turkey Massacre while deer got off scot-free but every buck and every doe certainly has something to be grateful for.

I don't want to talk turkey, though or any of the other kind of wholesome comfort foods traditionally associated with Thanksgiving. I want to talk about the junk food that really sets the holiday apart. I mean, you eat turkey all the time but cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie only come around once a year.

Without cranberry sauce Thanksgiving dinner is kind of beige and bland. You can make the stuff all fresh and fancy like some kind of relish but I prefer the jelly version that comes in a can. In fact it comes "as" a can. Cut open the top and plop it out on a plate and you've got a perfect can-shaped mold.

I know it don't look like much but the canned stuff kicks the stem-hole (can the stem-hole be considered  cranberry ass?) of that highfalutin' other kind. It's junk food holiday heaven.

And no Thanksgiving dinner is complete without a piece of pumpkin pie. The fact that something this delicious can be made out of a tasteless gourd proves that enough sugar and spice makes everything nice. Apparently, you can pie anything. And don't forget the whipped cream on top.

No, seriously, you have to use more than that.

There you go. Spray it on thick right out of a can just the way the good Lord intended.

I might be stuck 25-hundred miles away this holiday but home tastes just a little closer thanks to junk food.