TAKE THAT WITH YOUR TURKEY
It’s the one thing even the vegetarians can agree on at the Thanksgiving table: the sides.
Even the folks who believe the turkey is a factory-farmed horror (and they’re not entirely wrong!) and the relatives who want to tell you why you voted for the wrong person will often go quiet in the presence of succotash, cornbread dressing or stuffing, pumpkin pie – and sweet potatoes.
It’s no accident that the traditional Thanksgiving meal is heavy on New World ingredients. Whatever actually happened between the Indigenous people and the Pilgrims in the 17th century – and, spoiler alert, it was not a TV-ready sit-down – the newcomers quickly learned to grow and love the local crops.
For thousands of years before the Puritans arrived, Indigenous people had been cultivating corn, squash, and beans, the “Three Sisters,” because the growing processes complement each other. Early settlers took the new ingredients and adapted them to the recipes in the cookery books they’d brought.
Succotash, with a name adapted from an Indigenous dish, is a great example. The Europeans took the new ingredients and the idea for combining them and added them to their own cooking conventions. The idea – and the dish – stuck. At first, it was just what people ate…but by the time Thanksgiving became a national commemoration in the mid-19th century, it was a necessary and traditional part of the feast. Even if nobody liked it. I can recall being forced to eat my grandmother’s succotash (lima beans and corn in gloopy white sauce – ick!) before the pie.
Speaking of – pumpkin pie is another great example of Indigenous and European traditions melding into something better. Indigenous people grew squash and baked them. The settlers brought their pie tradition and small but significant amounts of fragrant spices like cloves and cinnamon. And just like succotash, a very early dish that became a requirement.
Cranberries, too, which grew naturally in bogs…and benefited considerably from the cane sugar Europeans started bringing in. It’s worth remembering here that the original Thanksgiving feast would have been sweetened only by honey – cane sugar came later, at an unimaginable human cost.
And then there were the sweet potatoes. They started out as another way to add sweetness and nutrition to the meal…and then, things got really interesting. Heavily sweetened yam dishes became popular as Thanksgiving traditions evolved, leading finally to the infamous – or wonderful, depending on your viewpoint – sweet potato casserole with mini-marshmallows. It seems like the height of 1950s processed-product housewifery…until you think about green bean casserole.
Green-bean casserole is probably the real Thanksgiving litmus test. Either you want the kind with canned ingredients: beans, mushroom soup, and fried onions all come ready to open. Or you’re trying to elevate it with fresh haricots vert, sauce from scratch, and frizzled shallots – and good luck to you. How – and if – you do green-bean casserole says everything about where you’re from, what your social background is, and who you think you are.
Whoever YOU think you are, may you have a blessed, joyful, and grateful Thanksgiving…and may your only argument be about ice cream or cheese on the apple pie!
Got a #ThrowbackThursday idea? Drop it in the comments!
Even the folks who believe the turkey is a factory-farmed horror (and they’re not entirely wrong!) and the relatives who want to tell you why you voted for the wrong person will often go quiet in the presence of succotash, cornbread dressing or stuffing, pumpkin pie – and sweet potatoes.
It’s no accident that the traditional Thanksgiving meal is heavy on New World ingredients. Whatever actually happened between the Indigenous people and the Pilgrims in the 17th century – and, spoiler alert, it was not a TV-ready sit-down – the newcomers quickly learned to grow and love the local crops.
For thousands of years before the Puritans arrived, Indigenous people had been cultivating corn, squash, and beans, the “Three Sisters,” because the growing processes complement each other. Early settlers took the new ingredients and adapted them to the recipes in the cookery books they’d brought.
Succotash, with a name adapted from an Indigenous dish, is a great example. The Europeans took the new ingredients and the idea for combining them and added them to their own cooking conventions. The idea – and the dish – stuck. At first, it was just what people ate…but by the time Thanksgiving became a national commemoration in the mid-19th century, it was a necessary and traditional part of the feast. Even if nobody liked it. I can recall being forced to eat my grandmother’s succotash (lima beans and corn in gloopy white sauce – ick!) before the pie.
Speaking of – pumpkin pie is another great example of Indigenous and European traditions melding into something better. Indigenous people grew squash and baked them. The settlers brought their pie tradition and small but significant amounts of fragrant spices like cloves and cinnamon. And just like succotash, a very early dish that became a requirement.
Cranberries, too, which grew naturally in bogs…and benefited considerably from the cane sugar Europeans started bringing in. It’s worth remembering here that the original Thanksgiving feast would have been sweetened only by honey – cane sugar came later, at an unimaginable human cost.
And then there were the sweet potatoes. They started out as another way to add sweetness and nutrition to the meal…and then, things got really interesting. Heavily sweetened yam dishes became popular as Thanksgiving traditions evolved, leading finally to the infamous – or wonderful, depending on your viewpoint – sweet potato casserole with mini-marshmallows. It seems like the height of 1950s processed-product housewifery…until you think about green bean casserole.
Green-bean casserole is probably the real Thanksgiving litmus test. Either you want the kind with canned ingredients: beans, mushroom soup, and fried onions all come ready to open. Or you’re trying to elevate it with fresh haricots vert, sauce from scratch, and frizzled shallots – and good luck to you. How – and if – you do green-bean casserole says everything about where you’re from, what your social background is, and who you think you are.
Whoever YOU think you are, may you have a blessed, joyful, and grateful Thanksgiving…and may your only argument be about ice cream or cheese on the apple pie!
Got a #ThrowbackThursday idea? Drop it in the comments!
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Happy Thanksgiving, my friend.