“When we love, we love to the extreme; when we celebrate, we celebrate to the extreme.”

DEARBORN — Dr. Heidi Abadeh puts cranberry and raisins in the rice she serves with turkey on Thanksgiving. She makes fried kibbe and hummus alongside mashed potatoes and corn. It’s a culinary testament to being Arab and American.

Arab Americans “go all out” in celebrating Thanksgiving, according Haidar Koussan, co-owner of Greenland Market.

Koussan said the grocery chain ran out of turkeys two days before the holiday; it sold 1,800 birds. Sales of lamb and other foods also increased.

When it comes to excitement and food preparation, Koussan said local Arabs put in double the effort of other Americans.

“When we love, we love to the extreme; when we celebrate, we celebrate to the extreme,” he said. “We love to eat.”

Koussan said Thanksgiving provides the “perfect opportunity” for the community’s families to celebrate and get together other than the month of Ramadan. 

He added that Arab Americans are ready to take part in all positive aspects of mainstream culture.

As for his own family, Koussan said his parents, siblings and their children will number more than 30 people around the dinner table on Thursday.

He said they have always celebrated the holiday with a turkey prepared with Arabic spices and rice.

Abadeh said sharing food and conversations with relatives is her favorite part of the holiday.

“It’s about the gathering,” she said. “The meal is a way of bringing us together.”

Abadeh said her Thanksgiving table hosts a “mish-mash” of traditional holiday delicacies and Middle Eastern dishes.

She serves pumpkin pie, but guests often bring baklava. Abadeh said the family often drinks Turkish coffee after the meal and her husband reads the diners’ fortunes in the empty cups.

Sally Howell, professor of Arab American studies at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, said Thanksgiving celebrates food and family and that Arab Americans are hospitable people with large families.

“You put all these things together, Thanksgiving becomes a very important holiday,” she said of the occasion’s significance to the Arab community.

Howell said it is the norm for immigrant and ethnic groups to incorporate dishes from their cultural cuisines in the Thanksgiving meal.

She said it is common for Arab Americans to stuff the turkey with rice and nuts, instead of bread.

Howell also said even among Americans who do not consider themselves ethnic, there are regional variations in Thanksgiving traditions. For example, Southerners use corn bread for stuffing, while Americans in New England use regular bread.

Adnan Fawaz, the owner of Al-Jabal restaurant in Livonia, is serving turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, Greek salad, fattush, brown rice, hummus and fried kibbe on Thanksgiving.

Fawaz said there are many ways to work Arabic flavors into the turkey, including dressing the wings with garlic and cilantro and adding nuts to the stuffing. 

“You can serve vegetarian grape leaves on the side, hummus, baba ghannouj, anything really,” he said. “Good food knows no culture.”