Thanksgiving
milhayser | November 24, 2016Today is about American tradition, and feeling grateful for all that we have been given. The first Thanksgiving represented the gratitude of American settlers towards the indigenous peoples who originally inhabited this country. It is about the men and women who came to North America on the Mayflower giving back to the men and women who helped them to survive in the 'new' world. It is about Tisquantum, a Patuxet enslaved by a Briton, sold in Spain, liberated by monks, and steeped in the English language before returning to his homeland and teaching the colonists to "catch eel and grow corn."…
gregladen | November 23, 2016What is Thanksgiving?
Thanksgiving is a feast. But what is a feast? Anthropology is all about examining ourselves through the lens of other cultures. Or, at least, that's what we used to do back in the good old days. Let's have a look at this great American holiday from this perspective and see what we see.
A traditional feast in Venezuela
The enemy has arrived, in force, outside your village. The men are armed and wearing the symbols of war, which is appropriate because your group and the group milling about outside your walled settlement are at war. One of the men, wearing war garb but…
gregladen | November 23, 2016When I go to Thanksgiving, all the people there will be reasonable. Also, this will be in Minnesota where politics are not discussed. And if they are discussed, my Father-in-Law has well developed techniques to run interference, as is his responsibility as head of the hosting household. There will be chairs to get from the basement (always wait until the last second to ask Greg to help with the chairs, just in case he starts talking politics!). The dogs are trained to make a fuss when given secret hand signals. That sort of thing.
But you may not be as fortunate as I am. Perhaps you will…
gregladen | November 24, 2015First and foremost, depending on when you are reading this, TAKE THE TURKEY OUT OF THE FREEZER.
But seriously, Thanksgiving is, to me, one of the more interesting holidays. It is a "feast." You knew that already, but what you may not have known is that "feasting" is a human activity found world wide and often studied by anthropologists. Feasting is not exactly a human universal, as it is rare in foraging societies. But whenever certain conditions arise, feasting seems to emerge as a part of normative culture.
As a human, you may automatically think of feasting as a pleasantry, a fun thing…
gregladen | December 15, 2014Are you done with your Thanksgiving leftovers yet? You might think so, but not quite. We have one more helping of Turkey for you.
This is "Another Helping of Turkey," the second of two installments of Eat This Podcast with Jeremy Cherfas:
The domestication of the turkey probably first took place around 2000 years ago in south central Mexico, possibly for their feathers and ritual value rather than their meat. Their rise to the top of the American festive table came much later, not with the Pilgrims but with Charles Wampler, whose efforts to promote turkey raising started Rockingham County,…
gregladen | December 2, 2014"As Thanksgiving ebbs into memory and Christmas looms on the horizon, Eat This Podcast concerns itself with the turkey. For a nomenclature nerd, the turkey is a wonderful bird. Why would a bird from America be named after a country on the edge of Asia? The Latin name offers a clue; the American turkey is Meleagris gallopavo, while the African guineafowl is Numida meleagris. But why did the first settlers adopt a name they were already familiar with, rather than adopt a local indigenous name such as nalaaohki pileewa for the native fowl. Simple answer: nobody knows..."
Listen to the podcast (…
dr. dolittle | November 28, 2014 Image from www.chow.com
Did you know that the typical Thanksgiving day broad-breasted white turkey develops in as little as 136 days (on average)? This remarkably quick development is a result of years of selective breeding. The average turkey in 1929 was only about 13 pounds, whereas modern turkeys average around 30 pounds with much of the weight centered in the breast muscles.
The Poultry Science Association claims that this breeding program has resulted in skeletal problems as muscle growth outpaces bone growth, heart problems, and a lower ability to mount immune responses to certain…
cmonforton | November 27, 2014The goofy Thanksgiving tradition took place at the White House again this year: the pardoning of a turkey. Two gobblers, “Mac” and “Cheese,” were competing for the Presidential dispensation which was determined by votes on Twitter. Wednesday morning, I received a White House news alert inviting me to watch a live feed of the pardoning ceremony. I tuned in, faintly hoping that the President would use the lighthearted event---which gets plenty of news coverage each year---for a serious purpose. Would the President raise up and thank the workers who grow, tend, harvest and pack much of the food…
gregladen | November 27, 2014An interview with an expert on Turkey (me, apparently) about turkeys. What do I mean by "turkey"? The bird, the country, the personality trait? Well, that is the point, isn't it!
Click here to get the skinny on turkey.
dr. dolittle | November 26, 2014I came across this interesting literature on what foods you should avoid feeding a dog from the ASPCA Animal Poison Control:
milhayser | December 2, 2013Gratefulness is an important part of a happy life, but are we right to be thankful for an ill-gotten bounty? In a country of 300 million people, a turkey on every table (or a chicken in every pot) means that many birds live hard and die fast. They are also plucked, gutted, inspected, and packaged as quickly as possible, leaving human workers to pay the price. On the Pump Handle, Celeste Monforton debunks the National Chicken Council's claim that working in a poultry processing plant is as safe as making omelets at a country club. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, poultry…
dr. dolittle | November 26, 2013In honor of our most beloved Thanksgiving dinner guest:
Despite their rather large stature, ranging from 2.5-10.8 kg, wild turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo) can fly as seen in this video:
For more information about turkeys:
Cornell Lab of Ornithology
gregladen | November 22, 2013There is a storm (this one) moving across the southern part of the United States that forecasters predict will turn north over the Atlantic and menace the east coast somewhere between Northern New England and Washington DC or Virginia, possibly much of that area. The storm may develop, forecasters say, into a Nor'easter. I looked at the predicted Jet Stream configuration for next Wednesday and I noticed that is will be all curvy-durvy like it has been so often lately. This curvy jet stream is so much more common these days because, climate scientists think, of the phenomenon of Arctic…
gregladen | November 22, 2012Today is Thanksgiving in the US. Happy Thanksgiving. Let us being with a word of advice:
TAKE THE TURKEY OUT OF THE FREEZER NAO!!!
And now ... a feast.
The enemy has arrived, in force, outside your village. The men are armed and wearing the symbols of war, which is appropriate because your group and the group milling about outside your walled settlement are at war. One of the men, wearing war garb but adorned also with white flagging to indicate a peaceful intent attempts to enter your village but is stopped by guards. They converse briefly and the guards allow the man to crawl into…
esiegel | November 21, 2012“We live in an atmosphere of shame. We are ashamed of everything that is real about us; ashamed of ourselves, of our relatives, of our incomes, of our accents, of our opinions, of our experience, just as we are ashamed of our naked skins.” -George Bernard Shaw
All that is real about ourselves is nothing to be ashamed about; quite to the contrary, it's something to be eminently thankful for. This very existence is all we have, and while it's minuscule compared to the entire Universe, it required the entire Universe to bring us to the point where it's possible for us to exist.
What do I mean by…
dr. dolittle | November 21, 2012This video from Scientific American explains how Thanksgiving dinner makes you feel sleepy:
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
gregladen | November 18, 2012You've got your turkey all planned out, and you've got some stock. Now, it's time to explore the true meaning of Thanksgiving. Gravy. (And maybe something to put it on.)
I will tell you how to make excellent gravy with no stress and guaranteed success. Without lumps.
I don't do recipes. I do theory. But this theoretical approach will get you through. Its very simple.
You are going to need the following:
A stick of butter or two, and an equal volume of regular flour. You can use special fancy dancy flour if you want, but that is not necessary.
Several cups of a liquid such as stock.…
gregladen | November 18, 2012First, consider cooking something other than a turkey
Cooking turkey is actually kind of a dumb idea. Most people don't ever cook turkey. Turkey is like chicken ... it's a domestic bird that is familiar to all Americans ... but it is very difficult to cook in a way that does not ruin it. So once a year, you cook this huge bird and try not to ruin it, and invite everybody that is important to you over to see if it worked.
As a result of this the truth is that many people have never had good turkey. They've only had ruined turkey. And for each of these people, what they think turkey…
sastyk | November 21, 2011My mother in law ate a roasted turnip at my house the other day. It was unfamiliar enough to her in that form (she'd had mashed turnips before) that she had to ask me what it was, and it was a reminder of the fact that this time of year truly is the only time that many Americans come in contact with the lesser-known root vegetables. While carrots, potatoes and onions are part of our daily lives, and sweet potatoes and beets are at least intermittenly familiar (if commonly hated), few Americans know celeriac, turnips, parsnips, taro, rutabagas, yams, jerusalem artichokes or many others well…
sastyk | November 23, 2010If you want to make a traditional Thanksgiving dinner wholly from scratch, you start ahead of time. If you want to make it from food you've raised yourself, you start way, way ahead of time - like in January of the year before. In some ways, it starts even earlier, but January is the new year - and when you grow your own, you are always thinking of the future - even if not consciously about any particular dinner.
It is in January that we order seeds for the vegetables we'd serve at Thanksgiving, that we debate which varieties of pumpkin and carrots, celery root, sweet corn, squash and leeks…