Thanksgiving Thoughts

 Yeah. Late to the party.  Whatever.  Leave it.

So, many people around me in real life and on the news that I haven't managed to entirely avoid (more on news-avoidance in a future blog...or not), apparently had to figure out how to BUY stuff and GET NEW stuff for Thanksgiving dinner.  I see the same happening at Xmas.

First, I don't celebrate thanksgiving.  It marks not only the harvest, but the slaughter of indigenous people by colonizers who often justified the slaughter by labeling the indigenous people "heathens" though the colonizers were seeking "religious freedom."  It's too fraught so I just like to stay home and do whatever.  Sadly, what I really like to do with a day home and 3 more days home ...is cook great stuff to eat and then eat it and keep eating it for 3 days.  Hypocrite much?  Perhaps.

Back to the point.

IF you see thanksgiving as a harvest festival, celebrating the bounty of the earth etc etc.  Then what about eating what you have? The meal at the early thanksgivings (or the things we now label as such) was based on what the celebrants had and supposedly sharing that with the neighbors while they shared back (again, not what happened but what is supposedly celebrated).

All the buying and seeking and having specific foods.  If you look at the spirit of a harvest feast, which is pretty much pan-cultural at harvest times, then eating what is in the larder/fridge/rootcellar/pantry/cupboard/center-thingy-in-the-car would be the thing to do.  Appreciating (which is related to the "thanksgiving" part of the name of the day) what you have would seem to be the justification of the US version of the holiday and appreciating what is harvested and shared would seem to be the point of most harvest feasts.

In that vein, perhaps at Xmas we could appreciate what we have.  Shop in the pantry/cupboard/larder/freezer/glove-box before rushing out to buy whatever specific meat/veg/fruit/sweet things you ALWAYS have.  Just because something is the way you've always done it doesn't mean it's the only or the best way.  Change it up.  There is no crime in hamburgers for thanksgiving or lentils for xmas. Or perhaps...PERHAPS...not having crap pumpkin pie and even crapper pumpkin pie spice things.   The rest of you should change, but I stand by the necessity of avoiding both of those. Barf.  Also any beverage that begins or ends with "nog."  

On Thursday Nov 26, 2020 I made soup with what I had.  I had great things.   Deer meat, chicken meat and duck meat in jars.  Squash from the community garden.  Jams from friends and the farmers market (which I forgot to eat).  I didn't go buy anything just for that day.  I won't buy anything for solstice or xmas day either.  I WILL save a few treats (though not the chocolate I just ate) if I remember.  If not, I will, as I do most days now, look at what I have and go from there.   

Sometimes the "whatchagot" meals are fantastic.  E.g. brown rice duck casserole.  That was great!  Not always.  Deer meat with cheap canned veg was not fantastic but was plenty good enough.  Squash roasted inside the firebox of the woodstove is exquisite and I'm not sure I care to cook it any other way.  But the last remaining pumpkin from the community garden might be bigger than the door to my woodstove.  If so, I will cook it some other way.  These pumpkins appear to be crossed with spaghetti squash and cook up nicely. The left overs make interesting additions to soup.  Is it a noodle?  A vegetable?