On Thanksgiving Night, 1942, when I was fifteen years old, white racists burned our house to the ground.

I loved my mom so much because she had to work on a penny just to put food on the table... During the Depression in the United States, everybody had a tough time. And I was so hurt because she was crying that she didn't have any food for us for Thanksgiving.

As much as I love crisp, clean whites, there's always a time for rich but balanced Chardonnays with oak, especially at Thanksgiving.

My mum, Helen, was hilarious. She had a tremendous sense of humour and was a great singer and tap dancer. For many years, she was the voice of Minnie Mouse in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. She would be in the float as it came along, singing whatever the Minnie Mouse song of the day was. She was a really big spirit in my life.

I would love four children because I have a very small family, so I want those big Thanksgiving dinners.

Berries have a lot of soluble fiber. That's why they gel up when you're making your Thanksgiving cranberry sauce, with the pectin.

It's so warm now, and Thanksgiving came so early - is it just me, or does it not really feel like Ramadan?

If no one shopped on Thanksgiving Day, the stores wouldn't open. End of story. I say we all take the pledge and stay home. Thanksgiving is a day to give thanks for what you have, not to save a few dollars to get more.

Thanksgiving was always a favorite holiday for me. The preparation was fun! My grandma and I would walk to the butcher on Jamaica Avenue in Queens, order the bird, and buy all the fixings at the market.

I'd love to give my girls a traditional Thanksgiving with turkey and all that jazz, but we've raised them to love Tuscan food so much that they don't care for it. My favorite is a nice polenta with beef stew and broccoli rabe on the side.

A lot of Thanksgiving days have been ruined by not carving the turkey in the kitchen.

It's a bit of a sore spot, the Thanksgiving in Indian country.

Being an Ethiopian-born, Swedish-raised chef, there's nothing traditional about my Thanksgiving spread.

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite American traditions. I quickly picked it up when I moved to the U.S. from Sweden.

There was a time, in the not so distant past, that if you didn't have what you needed on Thanksgiving, you were pretty much going to have to wait until Friday. Not anymore!

That's one of the great things about Thanksgiving: Football's on!

When I was just starting out in the business, I used to love to watch Lorne Greene doing the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. I said right then, 'That's what I want to do someday,' and it's been one dream that has come true.

I started acting in second grade - my first role was in the Thanksgiving play. I was the Indian chasing the turkey. All the other mom's encouraged my mom to get me into acting after that. Also, when I saw 'The Sound of Music' at Music Circus, I knew I wanted to act.

Thanksgiving, our eminent moral holiday, doesn't have much for children. At its heart are conversation, food, drink, and fellowship - all perks of adulthood.

When my family was living in Tokyo, there was a year when we couldn't go back to the States for Thanksgiving, and we went to Seoul. Mandu is a highly satisfying substitute for turkey and trimmings.

I love chicken. I would eat chicken fingers on Thanksgiving if it were socially acceptable.

Even if you are vegetarian, you do want to have a stuffing for Thanksgiving. The stuffing is not so much about the vegetables, but it's very unique to the season.

As governor, when I visited our troops in Kuwait and Iraq, I served them Thanksgiving dinner. It was a small gesture compared to their sacrifice.

It's like being at the kids' table at Thanksgiving - you can put your elbows on it, you don't have to talk politics... no matter how old I get, there's always a part of me that's sitting there.

My interactions with my family members are all one-to-one. We don't all get together for Thanksgiving dinner. But I can sit and tell any one of them about a conversation that I just had with the other one, and they're all curious and interested and respectful.

If you think about a Thanksgiving dinner, it's really like making a large chicken.

I don't think any other holiday embraces the food of the Midwest quite like Thanksgiving. There's roasted meat and mashed potatoes. But being here is also about heritage. Cleveland is really a giant melting pot - not only is my family a melting pot, but so is the city.

My restaurants are never opened on Thanksgiving; I want my staff to spend time with their family if they can. My feeling is, if I can't figure out how to make money the rest of the year so that my workers can enjoy the holidays, then I don't deserve to be an owner.

Lets talk about the holidays, more specifically, consumption during the holidays. If it's true that 'We are what we eat,' most of us would be unrecognizable during the period that ranges from the night before Thanksgiving through that day in early January when everyone decides to return to the gym.

I always love the soapy conflicts between somebody's family of origin and their new family - 'Do I have Thanksgiving at my husband's parents' house, or at my parents' house?'

Throughout its history, the members of Shearith Israel have observed Thanksgiving by reciting in synagogue the same psalms of praise and gratitude sung by Jews all over the world on festive days like Hanukkah.

My son was born during my last semester in college. His due date was Thanksgiving, but he didn't show up until finals week. I brought my books to the hospital and didn't think anything of it. That is what a father is supposed to do.

Something I didn't even know was on my bucket list has been achieved. I have cooked Thanksgiving dinner with Martha Stewart. I vow to follow the gospel of her teachings and do my very best in the remarkably less glamorous kitchen of my own home... without the luxury of magically appearing prep bowls filled by a staff of sous chefs.

When I was about nine years old, I announced to my mother that I was going to cook Thanksgiving dinner. And I went to the library and got this whole pile of books. I'd love to say it all turned out great. It didn't. But, sort of, from that point on, whenever there was serious cooking at home, I was the one who did it.

In deference to American traditions, my family put our oven to rare use at Thanksgiving during my childhood, with odd roast-turkey experiments involving sticky-rice stuffing or newfangled basting techniques that we read about in magazines.

We all have somebody that sits down at the Thanksgiving table and says the most outrageous things, and you're doin' the dishes with your sister, and you're like, 'Omigod, can you believe she said that?'

On Thanksgiving I will stop to give thanks that my family is safe and healthy, especially because I realize that, following the tragedies of this year, it is all too real a possibility that they might not have been.

As a kid, I was always mad - just noticing the women at Thanksgiving, running around the kitchen, while the men were watching football. For one, I don't want to cook, and for two, I hate football. I was stuck in the middle.

One of the best parts of Thanksgiving for me is re-watching some of the classic holiday blunders that have been depicted on television. I remember laughing uncontrollably on the set of 'That Girl' back in 1967 when we shot the episode, 'Thanksgiving Comes But Once A Year, Hopefully' during our second season.

It is now common knowledge that the average American gains 7 pounds between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day.

It's part of the American experience: We deal with mosquitoes in August, airport delays around Thanksgiving, expensive health care and the potential of being shot, at any time, by a semiautomatic weapon as we try to go about the most boring, precious, asinine aspects of our daily lives.

I've always had fond memories of cooking Thanksgiving.

I really don't do much on the night of Thanksgiving other than bring the wine and carve the turkey. My contribution comes the day after, in the form of breakfast. I usually just forage through the leftovers for things that will go well with eggs.

I'm a big cook and prefer to make meals at home when I can. I'm either cooking, or we're going to a drive-through somewhere. I'm really proud of my homemade sweet potato pie. At Thanksgiving I make five of them because they go quick.

I'm blessed to come from a family with five brothers. We're all physical and athletic and like to work out, like to be outside, like to throw the ball around. We spent our entire childhoods on some kind of corner or in a field. We still do a Turkey Bowl every Thanksgiving. It gets competitive, man. Bloody.

I grew up in Boston, and we'd have every Thanksgiving at my parents' house there.

One Thanksgiving weekend, I had a lost weekend at a friend's place with 'Grand Theft Auto.'

My whole problem is that all of my favorite things at Thanksgiving are the starches, and everyone is trying to go low-carb this year, even a green vegetable has carbs in it.

Not to sound too much like Christopher Guest in 'Waiting for Guffman,' but on Thanksgiving you're putting on a show!

Thanksgiving is America's favorite holiday because it's a time when we put aside our cares, much as the struggling Pilgrims did nearly four centuries ago, and eat a gut-busting meal without worrying about the 'out years.'