'Dancing with the Stars,' 'Twillight' Celebs Talk Thanksgiving Traditions

Thanksgiving is this Thursday, and celebrities are dishing on their favorite holiday traditions and foods. Here's a sample:

* "Dancing with the Stars: All-Stars" finalist Melissa Rycroft and her partner, Tony Dovolani, agree that garlic mashed potatoes is a good choice for Thanksgiving. She also enjoys "cornbread stuffing. Absolutely. Put a little sausage in that thing, I can eat the entire thing."

Since she's still alive in the ABC competition, she says her husband Tye Strickland and family members will fly out to the West Coast for Thanksgiving dinner.

* "Dancing with the Stars: All-Stars" finalist Kelly Monaco won't load up on turkey at the dinner table, because she's a vegetarian. But, she adds, she'll eat "everything" else. Her dancing partner, Val Chmerkovskiy, says he'll feast on "everything and the turkey."

* "Dancing with the Stars: All-Stars" semifinalist Apolo Anton Ohno loves deep fried turkey, and his partner, Karina Smirnoff, favors chocolate chip pecan pie.

* "Dancing with the Stars: All-Stars" contestant Gilles Marini is grateful to have the essentials in life, considering how much devastation Hurricane Sandy caused in the Northeast. He says, "I am absolutely blessed just having a roof over my head….Thankful for just being alive and healthy with my family the same."

* Elizabeth Reaser, who plays Esme Cullen in the "Twilight" series, has a fun - and aggressive - family tradition. She explains, "Usually, there's a lot of eating and then wrestling with my sisters. Like, not formal wrestling just, you know, sisterly, kind of like, pushing, rolling around, being silly."

* Jamie Lee Curtis, who appeared on Tuesday's episode of the Fox comedy "New Girl" as the mother of Zooey Deschanel's character, will celebrate her 54th birthday on Thanksgiving Day.

"I do a traditional post-Thanksgiving and post-Christmas meal, which is a very rich turkey soup with mashed potato pancakes and sweet potatoes on top of those floating in them," she said. "It's excellent."

* Rob Reiner co-starred on the aforementioned "New Girl" episode as the dad of Deschanel's character. He has a specific Thanksgiving family tradition.

"We take a drumstick from the turkey and you pass it around the table and you say what you are thankful for, so everybody, and then you can either take a bite out of it or just pass it on," he said.

* "The Big Bang Theory" actress Mayim Bialik says she doesn't have any Thanksgiving traditions.

"We're going up north to my in-laws this year but nothing significantly different," she said. "The Jewish New Year just ended and so it's been, like, so many holidays when Thanksgiving comes, it's like just find me a place to sit and I will eat whatever's in front of me."

* Thirteen-year-old Kiernan Shipka, who plays the daughter of Jon Hamm's Don Draper on "Mad Men," is staying out of the kitchen on Thursday.

"I love, love, love cooking but on Thanksgiving, I don't help cook," she said. "It's very hard but usually I'm always in the kitchen whipping up something."