Now is a time to be at home with loved ones. Thanksgiving celebrations have evolved significantly since their inception, but at the core has been a simple message: to be with loved ones.

The New York Police Officer charged with conspiring to kidnap and eat women, Gilberto Valle, may have been planning to eat his victims for Thanksgiving, prosecutors have said.
 
Federal prosecutor Hadassa Waxman read aloud a transcript of an Internet chat conversation from February 9. Valle (29) told one of his conspirators that turkey would not satisfy his hunger.
 
The New York Post reports that the conversation went like this:
 
“Valle: “I’m planning on getting some girl meat.
 
“Alleged co-conspirator: “Really? Tell me more.
 
“Valle: “This November, for Thanksgiving. It’s a long way off, but I’m getting the plan in motion now. She’s not a volunteer. She has to be abducted. I know where she lives. I will grab her from her house.”
 
Valle was turned in by his Irish American wife Kathleen Mangan who came across his “blueprints” for the “abduction and cooking” of women on her laptop. Having read the graphic manifesto Valle had left on her computer she tipped off the cops before fleeing with their young child.
 
Read more: Cannibal cop’s Irish American wife tipped off the FBI when she discovered his deranged plans
 
The cop’s lawyer, Julia Gatto, has argued that these online chats were merely “sick, twisted” sexual fantasies that he shared with other fetishists.
 
She likened these online fetishists to “Star Trek geeks and science-fiction movie guys who dress up and go to conventions.”
 
Having carried out an investigation into Valle’s “subculture” Gatto had uncovered the site that Valle frequented.
 
She said, “All over the Web site, it says: No matter how real this sounds, this is all fantasy”
 
The lawyer added that, “there’s nothing the government can point to outside the computer.”
 
Gatto maintains that the psychologist who examines Valle concluded he is no danger to society.
 
However, the prosecutor, Waxman, said an FBI expert, at Quantico, VA, said Valle is “not fantasizing” and would pursue the plans he had made if he was freed.
 
Waxman said, “The fact that nothing happened is really extraordinarily fortunate.”
 
The defense team argues that Valle should be allowed to reside at his mother’s home wearing a GPS ankle.
 
Judge Paul Gardephe said this proposal would not guarantee the safety of the community or prevent him from fleeing.
 
The Judge said, “There has been nothing rational about this case,” Gardephe said. “It is depraved, bizarre, aberrational and, as of now, entirely unexplained, particularly for someone who is a law-enforcement officer.”
 
Valle is currently being held in solitary confinement in the Metropolitan Correctional Center, in downtown Manhattan. If convicted he would face a maximum of life in prison.
 
Valle’s trial is scheduled for January 22.

Now is a time to be at home with loved ones. Thanksgiving celebrations have evolved significantly since their inception, but at the core has been a simple message: to be with loved ones.

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving with friends and family and you all survived the craziness of ‘Black Friday’ in the malls of America. Now you have just today left to finish off all of that turkey!

Looking for some simple recipes to use up that left-over turkey?

An Old Irish Blessing

Happy Thanksgiving! It’s the time to reflect on all of the fortunate accomplishments we’ve made this past year.

As the recession has crushed the retail market in the past few years, stores have been pushing the holiday shopping season earlier and earlier in an attempt to stay in the black. (The term Black Friday is based on the fact that stores used to count on the day after Thanksgiving to get them out of the red for the year and into the black, making a profit.)

One of the harder challenges I have had to face during my time abroad was the fact that I would not be spending the American holiday of Thanksgiving with my family. I have a pretty small family and we do not have the stereotypical large family feast that has become synonymous with the big day, and even though I would not be missing a huge family celebration, I did miss the thought of being near to loved ones. This changed however, when an American friend of mine invited me to an American Thanksgiving celebration that she was planning with some of the other American students. They had also extended the invitation to some Irish friends as well, who all responded right away to the invite.