As Falvey’s Cat in the Stax, Rebecca writes articles covering a broad range of topics, from academics to hobbies to random events. All the while highlighting how Falvey Library can enhance your Villanova experience!

Photo by Katrina Frederick

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! It’s almost here, and I want to wish everyone a fun and food-filled holiday. I hope you all are enjoying the break and taking this time off from school to relax, connect with friends and family, and think about everything you are grateful for. Load up on those carbs, eat as much food as you can, and savor every bite.

I was interested about the most popular Thanksgiving foods, and I wanted to see what people were most likely cooking this year. So, I looked on Google Trends to see what people were searching up as the holiday draws closer. Below are the five top trending Thanksgiving Recipes in the U.S.:

1. Turkey Dressing
2. Green Bean Casserole
3. Mashed Potatoes
4. Prime Rib
5. Corn Casserole

Now keep in mind that these are only side dishes. Turkey is the traditional main dish of this holiday, and its annual place at the table in reflected in the Google Trends data. Every year, there is a huge spike in “how to cook a turkey” search interests during the month of November.

Another Thanksgiving food staple is pie. While one might think a typical pie served for this holiday to be either pumpkin or apple (or maybe pecan pie), the trends show that people are considering different kinds for their holiday meal. The picture below shows Google’s most searched for pies in each state:

As you can see, the types of pies being searched vary quite a bit, though there are a few common ones. According to this map, the top five most searched for pies are 1) apple pie, 2) pumpkin pie, 3) key lime pie, 4) sweet potato pie, and 5) pecan pie. Does this ranking surprise you? How about some of these outliers?

No two tables look the same! The data here shows that certain ideas we might have about Thanksgiving foods are different across the nation. Families might have different traditions during this holiday, and every household serves different dishes. Even if you are planning for a more “traditional” meal, the recipes used are not the same across the board. Every dinner this holiday will be unique in its own way!

Rebecca Amrick is a first year graduate student in the English Department and a Graduate Assistant at Falvey Library.

By Linda Hauck

Falvey now has access to premium data on the Sports Business Research Network (SBRnet), which conducts twice yearly consumer surveys of a representative sample of U.S. consumers 13 years and older.  The surveys include questions about sport and team fandom by demographic characteristics (gender, age, income, geography, and education), media usage (social media, device usage, and channels watched), spending on merchandise, sports travel behavior, and select food and beverage consumption patterns and insurance, banking, and credit usage.

This new content compliments the news, directories and additional data sets in SBRnet. There are directories for sports venues, marketing agencies,  sport associations and team and player performance sites.  Its a one-stop shop for sporting goods spending, participation, attendance, fan demographics, and media usage data, downloadable in Excel format. Use it to keep up to date on business developments on everything from baseball to fantasy football, sports gambling, pickleball, and sports law to name just a few topics.

SBRnet is a top pick for sports analytics, marketing and management students.

Linda Hauck, MLS, MBA is Business Librarian at Falvey Library.