Winner, winner, turkey dinner

We are in the midst of eating season, and if you don't believe it, just ask your waistline.

Or your scales.

In my world, the eating season begins Oct. 31 with the annual sugar grab on Halloween. It continues 27 days later with Thanksgiving before waxing high tide at Christmas with cookies and cakes. It then reaches its denouement on New Year's Day with a pork and sauerkraut meal supplemented by collard greens and black-eyed peas designed to make you stop eating forever.

Stacy's incomparable table setting is an art form.

In between, there are virtually two solid months of picking, sneaking, and cheating with M&Ms, potato chips and dip and Cheez-its because we have endless football games in front of us that require mindless snacking as we watch power sweeps and post patterns. Maybe even flag plantings. You probably don't even know you're doing it.

The eating season.

My eating season includes a stretch of a couple days around Thanksgiving where I have to sample my favorite food group: turkey. Usually, I search out a local restaurant that offers a Thanksgiving meal the day before Thanksgiving. It's become something of a tradition in my house.

Sure, it's usually processed turkey and dressing that came out of a box, but, hey, it's the holidays. You make concessions.

Anyway, this year, we had a bonus. Southern Lunch prepared its turkey meal on Tuesday as well as Wednesday, so that gave me an extra day to get a head start on my white meat fantasy.

Thanksgiving with the Wests and Wehrles.

Here's where I give owner Herbie Lohr his props. Tuesday's meal was delicious. I had generous slices of white meat turkey with dressing on top and underneath and swimming in gravy. I ordered mac and cheese as my side, along with a sweet potato casserole that was so good it could have been dessert. Thanks, Herbie. Mission accomplished.

On Wednesday my pre-Thanksgiving meal came from Village Grill. I don't remember VG preparing this holiday dinner before, so I gave it a shot. Their turkey was cut into bite-sized pieces and mixed into their dressing, and then piled high on my plate like an offering to the gods. I also had a side of mac and cheese, along with baked apples. Mmm mmm, good.

I was off to a good start.

But the piéce de résistance came on Thanksgiving day. Because my family is scattered to the four winds and are hundreds of miles away from each other (one brother is in Pennsylvania and another is in Oklahoma), our next door neighbors – Billy and Stacy West – have invited us over for Thanksgiving for several years now.

Billy used his grill to create a moist, delicious bird while Stacy went nuts in the kitchen, making mac and cheese (there's a theme here), an addictive sweet potato casserole, roasted cauliflower and roasted broccoli, collard greens and a pear salad assembled with fresh greens from our shared garden. Oh, and pumpkin pie, too. Kim contributed with an asparagus dish, mashed potatoes and her magical family dressing that she learned from her mother and for which she doesn't even have a recipe. It's somehow summoned from her DNA.

Oh, my.

This was the best meal of all because it was a meal culled from camaraderie. Both of the West's kids were home from college (Emma is in grad school at the Longy School of Music of Bard College in Boston and Sam is a freshman at the University of North Carolina) which fully completed our circle. The conversation at the dinner table was easy, the neighborliness was enhanced. I guess it's why Billy blows the leaves out of my yard every week. I guess it's why I wheel his garbage containers back to their respective spots every Friday. I guess this is what agape love is.

Anyway, the meal was so good we had it again the next day. As leftovers. In front of a football game.

And Christmas is just 24 days away. Pass the cookies, please.