You’re Not Minnesotan If You Don’t Have This Thanksgiving Side Dish

There are staples to the traditional Thanksgiving meal - turkey, rolls, stuffing, pumpkin pie. You can expect those. Anything else, I've always believed, is subject to personal preference - potatoes (whole, mashed or otherwise), green beans, salad, squash, yam, pecan pie.

But it turns out that the state you live in may also determine what accompanies your Thanksgiving turkey.

Google recently released its list of unique Thanksgiving side dishes per state as compiled by Google searches.Turns out Minnesotans love a side of Thanksgiving sweet potatoes with dinner. Our friends in Wisconsin prefer garlic mashed potatoes, in South Dakota ambrosia salad, down in Iowa corn casserole, and in my very own Illinois - sweet potato casserole. The most unexpected dish is probably Tenessee's mac-and-cheese and least appealing is North Carolina's corn pudding. I wouldn't mind some of Connecticut's sausage stuffing, though!

When it comes time for dessert, though, my family's Thanksgiving dessert is probably a little on the unconventional side. My birthday is November 27, and as a kid, my favorite birthday cake was ice cream cake. So every year, Thanksgiving dinner was typically followed by ice cream cake as we then celebrated my birthday. It's a tradition that's stuck!

What's your favorite Thanksgiving side dish?