Happy Thanksgiving...

I always feel a little guilty for the days leading up to Thanksgiving. We eat pretty well at our house, I don't mean steak and potatoes well, but we are far from starving.
Whenever my daughter tells me that she is starving, I tell her that she does not know what that word means, and probably will never experience starvation.

Our average dinner consists of a salad, some sort of stir-fry with lots of veggies and rice or potatoes, rice and a variety of beans. Sometimes I make an enchilada type dish or I will buy a roasted chicken for dinner.

Usually, there is enough left over for the adults to have a small portion of seconds, and my wife to take some for lunch the next day. Portions are not piles of food but small, probably a quarter of what you might get at a place like Applebees.

I felt the guilt start to come on when I did my first Thanksgiving shopping trip. My shopping cart was already pretty full when I went to look at the turkeys. The ten and sixteen pounders looked too small, I grabbed a 23 pound one and had to shuffle stuff around in order to get it in the cart.

It was then that I realized that I had enough food to feed a rather large family used to eating only rice for dinner. It was even more than enough for us; we were, by the way, only entertaining two other people.

The guilt stems from the idea that, normally I have enough, but on Thanksgiving it turns to more than enough. Is this a way for me to give thanks? To sit and over-eat while I know that there are thousands of people who can't conceive of what I eat on an average day. That I am lucky enough to not have to suffer in the way that the malnourished suffer?

I will feel grateful, when I will realize, that I have not had to grocery shop for a week and a half because of all the leftover turkey.