The calm before the cooking and a remembrance
The pumpkin pie is made (there's only three of us this year), the turkey is brined and dried and ready to stuff. I don't care how many articles I read on the "stuff or not stuff" controversy. I stuff and it turns out just fine. We're very serious about our stuffing here at Casa Flewelling. It only counts if it's properly and directly infused with the juices of the bird. I am going to put some herbed butter on the breast under the skin this year, just to see what it does.
The sweet potatoes were dealt with last night. White potatoes await their fate as a gravy delivery system. Tim is doing his famous wine braised brussels sprouts and carrots medley. And no homemade cranberry sauce here. We've tried lots of different recipes and always return to the canned jelly of our youth. Small sweet pickles and olives for small children (absent this year) to adorn fingertips await in the fridge. And gravy. There will be gravy. And if you haven't had the gravy from a brined free range turkey, you are missing one of the season's great gastronomic delights.
For my non-US friends who aren't quite sure of the background of Thanksgiving-- it is the remembrance of a fleeting moment of peace and cooperation between the first Plymouth, Massachusetts colonists and the Native Americans who saved them from starvation after their first disastrous winter in North America.
From History.com:
Throughout that first brutal winter, most of the colonists remained on board the ship, where they suffered from exposure, scurvy and outbreaks of contagious disease. Only half of the Mayflower's original passengers and crew lived to see their first New England spring. In March, the remaining settlers moved ashore, where they received an astonishing visit from an Abenaki Indian who greeted them in English. Several days later, he returned with another Native American, Squanto, a member of the Pawtuxet tribe who had been kidnapped by an English sea captain and sold into slavery before escaping to London and returning to his homeland on an exploratory expedition. Squanto taught the Pilgrims, weakened by malnutrition and illness, how to cultivate corn, extract sap from maple trees, catch fish in the rivers and avoid poisonous plants. He also helped the settlers forge an alliance with the Wampanoag, a local tribe, which would endure for more than 50 years and tragically remains one of the sole examples of harmony between European colonists and Native Americans.
As a footnote: if all those colonists had died that winter, Doug wouldn't be here, or my sons, and who knows? Maybe I wouldn't be writing what I am, without his support and input. So, a double thanks to Squanto and that nameless Abenaki from me. I'm sorry things eventually turned out as they did.
The sweet potatoes were dealt with last night. White potatoes await their fate as a gravy delivery system. Tim is doing his famous wine braised brussels sprouts and carrots medley. And no homemade cranberry sauce here. We've tried lots of different recipes and always return to the canned jelly of our youth. Small sweet pickles and olives for small children (absent this year) to adorn fingertips await in the fridge. And gravy. There will be gravy. And if you haven't had the gravy from a brined free range turkey, you are missing one of the season's great gastronomic delights.
For my non-US friends who aren't quite sure of the background of Thanksgiving-- it is the remembrance of a fleeting moment of peace and cooperation between the first Plymouth, Massachusetts colonists and the Native Americans who saved them from starvation after their first disastrous winter in North America.
From History.com:
Throughout that first brutal winter, most of the colonists remained on board the ship, where they suffered from exposure, scurvy and outbreaks of contagious disease. Only half of the Mayflower's original passengers and crew lived to see their first New England spring. In March, the remaining settlers moved ashore, where they received an astonishing visit from an Abenaki Indian who greeted them in English. Several days later, he returned with another Native American, Squanto, a member of the Pawtuxet tribe who had been kidnapped by an English sea captain and sold into slavery before escaping to London and returning to his homeland on an exploratory expedition. Squanto taught the Pilgrims, weakened by malnutrition and illness, how to cultivate corn, extract sap from maple trees, catch fish in the rivers and avoid poisonous plants. He also helped the settlers forge an alliance with the Wampanoag, a local tribe, which would endure for more than 50 years and tragically remains one of the sole examples of harmony between European colonists and Native Americans.
As a footnote: if all those colonists had died that winter, Doug wouldn't be here, or my sons, and who knows? Maybe I wouldn't be writing what I am, without his support and input. So, a double thanks to Squanto and that nameless Abenaki from me. I'm sorry things eventually turned out as they did.
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