American Thanksgiving. It's all about the big bird. Or is it?

Every year it's the same thing: Cooks everywhere spend countless hours debating the merits of free-range, organic, grass fed, wild, and frozen turkeys. Then when they finally decide on a turkey, they spend even more hours debating how to cook it: Will brining make the meat succulent? Should it be basted every hour? And what about the stuffing? Every family has that relative who insists on stuffing the turkey. So should you stuff the turkey and risk salmonella poisoning for your guests or incur your Aunt Edna's wrath? These are not easy questions.

That is why my favorite part of Thanksgiving has always been the side dishes. You know them – the perennial favorites such as cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, winter squash, string beans, and Brussels sprouts. Probably like most of you who celebrate Thanksgiving, I expect these dishes to grace the Thanksgiving table every year, but sometimes they need a little spicing up. Rather than traditional butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon, this acorn squash has some Latin flare.

A couple of years ago I raised a pair of heirloom turkey chicks – a Bourbon Red and a Spanish Black. The Spanish Black Tom was roasted, the Red still struts and preens in my chicken yard. I’ve taken to calling him MOLE.

Along the way we gave shelter to a Narragansett turkey hen from Ilse and Meeno’s Sky Farm. (The hen, hatching from an egg that was shipped overnight from Amherst, MA, and slipped under a brooding Silkie.) The hen began laying eggs last year – none fertile.

This year in March, old Mole garbled and squawked all night long, and come summer, there were fertile turkey eggs in our coop. (I know this as I cracked open an egg with a partly formed chick inside-ugh.) Aside from laying eggs, the turkey hen had no mothering instincts. She was not interested in nesting.

Thanksgiving is an annual American holiday celebrated by families, friends and magazines. Yes. Magazines. In fact, you could say our current version of Thanksgiving was invented by a magazine or more specifically a magazine editor.

Around this time every year, historians regale us with stories of what the first Thanksgiving was really like. We learn that it was unlikely they ate a stuffed turkey, there was no pumpkin pie, no cranberry sauce, and most of the food was provided by the Wampanoag not the pilgrims--who feasted on venison, lobsters, clams, oysters, and fish.

Harvest festivals were a long standing tradition for the Wampanoag natives going back way before the arrival of the pilgrims. The pilgrims and colonists, devout Christians, observed many days of "thanksgiving" throughout the year in which prayer and fasting were the order of the day, not feasting.

The first national Thanksgiving was held in December of 1777 by colonists to celebrate the surrender of British General Burgoyne at Saratoga. But Thanksgiving was not celebrated consistently all over the country until much, much later.

If by some chance you are looking for something really easy to do with your turkey leftovers, this is it.  It's a variation of the chicken chow mein you used to be able to get at the Trader Vic's at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, which is now more or less out of business.  Trader Vic's flameout was sad, because except for the mysteriously inept service, there were still wild and exciting things to eat there, starting with the classic Pupu Platter and including a curry served in a dish with room for about nine tiny little garnishes.  But oh well. So it goes.  Restaurants tend to break your heart.  The chicken chow mein was divine, especially if you ate it with a double order of toasted almonds and lots of chow mein noodles, and it's even better with turkey.

This recipe takes less than 15 minutes to make beginning to end.