Thanksgiving: That most American of holidays.

Once a year we gather around the table and tell the children a much-sanitized version of the story of a group of religious refugees, known as the Puritans, who fled persecution in England and came to the New World.

Thanksgiving is a day of celebration and gratitude, and those of us in the food industry have had much to be thankful for in 2014.

Here are our picks for the top four things the food business should be grateful for this Thanksgiving:

We have enough turkey 

Turkey is the core of the traditional Thanksgiving feast. It made its way to the center of the Thanksgiving meal, according to historians, because it has a distinctly anti-aristocratic appeal. 

But every so often, the nation's supply of turkeys falls dangerously low. As a result, prices rise to such levels that turkey becomes less a meat for everyone and more of a luxury item. It was like that last year when production errors led to shortages at retailers around the country. This year, there appears to be birds aplenty, so feel free to have seconds.

More importantly, particularly for vegetarian New Yorkers, the great knish shortage of last year has also ended.

We don't have enough green beans 

Normally, a food shortage would not be reason to celebrate. But the fact that this year's harvest of green beans is unusually small could actually turn out to be good news.

If there aren't enough beans for people to make that Thanksgiving green bean casserole, then perhaps that bit of what some consider horribleness will be replaced by a vegetable dish of some sort that doesn't contain canned soup or deep-fried bits of processed onion-like things.

We can serve cranberry water with our cranberry sauce 

Ocean Spray, the grower cooperative that has its headquarters just 20 or so miles from the Plimoth Plantation where the Pilgrims celebrated the first Thanksgiving, has done it again.

The exceedingly innovative company (i.e. the first juice box, for example) has debuted a new cranberry-infused water called PACt. Ocean Spray says it can help purify the body. 

Poppin' Fresh is in the parade 

For reasons that we can't understand, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is filled with giant balloons depicting cartoon characters, not food industry mascots. That hardly seems right.

But in recent years, a lone hero of the food industry floats through New York, raising the spirits of children and food marketing executives alike: Poppin' Fresh, aka, the Pillsbury Doughboy.

Poppin' made his first parade appearance in 2009, and he'll be back again this year, standing four stories tall and guided by a crew of 90 people in Pillsbury-branded costumes.