It's only a little less than a week until Thanksgiving -- the day when America sits down at the table with friends and family and relishes the fruits of the harvest.

Before you sit down and dig in, though, let's talk about those "fruits of the harvest." Any idea where they came from?

You might be surprised to discover just how far your Thanksgiving food has to travel (or not) before it gets to your table.

Take the turkey, for example.

According to the Census Bureau (who knew they counted turkeys?) and American Farmland Trust, the top five turkey-producing states are Minnesota, North Carolina, Arkansas, Virginia and Missouri, in that order. So it's entirely possible that your particular gobbler grew up right here in Missouri. In fact, the 21.5 million turkeys produced in the Show-Me state outnumber Missourians by almost four to one.

If you like to put carrots and celery in your stuffing, you might like to know that Canada sends carrots to your local supermarket. Since celery is grown year-round in California, it's a good bet your celery is from there, but don't you wonder why it's necessary to go to Canada for carrots? Couldn't they just grow them in between the rows of celery? Grimmway, headquartered in California, is the self-described biggest grower of carrots in the world. So why do our carrots come with a Canadian accent, eh?

Now let's turn our attention to potatoes. Surely most of our potatoes are grown in Idaho, aren't they? Yes, it's true potatoes are grown in Idaho, but they also come from Colorado, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

Funny thing about potatoes -- although the potato is native to South America, it had to take a detour through Europe before it arrived in the United States, some say from Ireland, in the early 1700s.

But here's a real surprise -- if you think that toyland is in China and not at the North Pole, you're only seeing part of the picture. According to American Journal of Potato Research, China has been the world's largest producer of potatoes since 1993.

While we're on the subject of vegetables, let's talk sweet potatoes (yuck, my least favorite vegetable). They're grown in several states, primarily North Carolina, Mississippi and Louisiana, but they're also grown all over the world in warm climates. They're even grown in China, but consumed mainly by livestock there. Chances are, the "sweets" on your table are domestic.

Squash, cauliflower, corn, green beans and lettuce, other possibilities for the holiday table, are all grown in large quantities in the U.S. and yours probably were grown in California, Ohio, Wisconsin or Minnesota.

Broccoli, though, is another matter. Broccoli is grown in several states -- California, Illinois and Florida, to name just a few. Package of Green Giant frozen broccoli I found locally, however, said "Product of Mexico."

Several types of tomatoes said the same thing.

The cranberries in the cranberry salad or sauce are probably from Massachusetts, Wisconsin or Washington. It's puzzling, isn't it, that there are four states with towns named "Cranberry" (Maryland, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and West Virginia) and two with towns named "Cranbury" (Connecticut and New Jersey), and no cranberries in the grocery store from any of them?

The pumpkin for the traditional pie, if not grown in your own backyard, reached your table from Illinois, Ohio or Pennsylvania. Illinois, by far, produces most of the domestic crop. Each of the other two states contributed at least 100,000 million pounds to the billion or so pounds of pumpkins produced each year in the U.S.

If you'd rather have cherry pie, you can thank the folks in Michigan for sharing their enormous crop with you.

Dessert involves sugar, of course. China, Mexico, Australia and Brazil are among the top cane-sugar producers in the world. Cane sugar also comes from Hawaii (so that makes it a domestic product, even way out there in the Pacific Ocean). The packaging of several brands of sugar made a point of mentioning the product inside was "real" sugar, not beet sugar. That's odd -- it seems to me that sugar is, well, sugar.

The "organic" sugar I found locally was produced in Paraguay. If you have a taste for demerara sugar, that comes to us from the nation of Mauritius, an island in the Indian Ocean. Demerara is often used for coffee, but it's more familiar as a decorative crunchy topping for holiday cookies and cakes. Call it the "Martha Stewart" of sugars.

As long as we're on the subject of dessert, consider the pecan. An essential element of holiday dessert, the pecan is widely available at this time of year. It grows in several states (Georgia and Alabama are just two) and here in mid-Missouri, it's hard to drive very far without seeing not just one or two, but hundreds of pecan trees. We are, in fact, awash in pecans. Don't you find it odd, then, that the ones in the stores here are from Mexico?

You just never know where food comes from until you read the labels. Sometimes the information is interesting, sometimes it's one of those things that makes you laugh out loud.

I'm still laughing over the fact that Kikkoman Soy Sauce, touted by several TV cooks and some of my "foodie" friends as the "most authentic" soy sauce, is brewed in Walworth, Wisconsin.