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Ask people what they love about Thanksgiving dinner, and chances are they'll end up talking about the cook as much as the food.
Pardon Bob Johnson, for instance, while he waxes sentimental about his daughter, Channing Kirkpatrick. Not only is she kind enough to have all the family over every Thanksgiving, she even takes menu requests.
"Bless her heart, she's absolutely great," her dad says.
As families across the region and the nation sit down today for fall's annual feast, they'll consume an estimated 690 million pounds of turkey, plus mountains of other traditional fare like cranberry sauce, stuffing and pumpkin pie.
Virtually every diner will be giving thanks not only for the food, but for that special person in the kitchen whose love and care soaks through each savory bite.
For Jami Farris, it's her mom, Carolyn Jackson, and her sweet potato casserole made with grated - never mashed - potatoes.
For Lisa Schilling, it's her dad, Tom Torrioni, who whips up a feast with a traditional Italian twist that includes appetizing antipasto to help get things started.
For Beverly Redmond, it's her grandmother, the late Travis Bradley, who always anchored her dressing with homemade cornbread and pearl onions.
"My cousin and I were talking the other day about how we wished we had her dressing," Redmond said, a hint of sadness creeping into her voice. She tries making it herself, but "it just doesn't come out right. It was just something special about how (my grandmother) made it, I guess."
Experts say it isn't unusual for the Thanksgiving food of loved ones to stir warm feelings and happy memories. Our favorite dishes double as emotional talismans to which we attach the love we feel for our kitchen-loving moms, grandmothers, dads or uncles.
There's even a scientific name for the phenomenon. It's "classical conditioning," says Howard Slutzky, a psychologist who teaches at Johnson & Wales University.
That's when a neutral object or "stimulus" - in this case the food - is paired with another that naturally elicits a reaction. In this case, the love we feel for a relative.
"Yeah, the food tastes good and everything, but it gains that sentimental, getting-choked-up-while-talking-about-it power because of its association with the loved one," Slutzky says.
Perhaps that's why people get so touchy about any major changes to the menu, says Peter Lehmuller, an associate dean at the culinary school. He remembers how one year he went all Johnson & Wales on his family's turkey. He deboned the bird, butterflied the breasts, ground the dark meat into a sausage stuffing and rolled it all into a ballotine.
(That's fancy chef talk for deboned meat that's been stuffed and rolled and tied in a bundle).
Great dish, he thought.
His family disagreed.
"No one would touch it," he says. "What I took away from it is you don't mess with the tradition."
No one will be disappointed at Channing Kirkpatrick's feast. Everybody's favorites are on the menu, including her late grandmother's recipe for bran muffins, her late aunt's sweet potato casserole and her dad's favorite - her three-day coconut cake.
And after all those years of making menu wishes come true for everyone else, there will be something special for the cook this year: Channing's son David, a Marine, home from Iraq early.
"We're just glad to have him home," she says. "It's going to make it so special."
