Seasonal, local Thanksgiving dinners

Thanksgiving is fast approaching — just a little over three weeks until the 26th.  Are you American Eco Warriors ready?

Something that has always fascinated Recycla is the so-called First Thanksgiving at Plymouth Plantation, which was a simple harvest festival that was held in 1621. For their festival, the Pilgrims would have eaten what they had available at that time of the year.  In that part of Massachusetts in 1621 those foods were:

• fish (cod, bass, herring, eel) and seafood (clams, lobsters, mussels)
• birds (wild turkey, goose, duck, crane, swan, partridge)
• venison
• grains (wheat flour, Indian corn and corn meal, barley)
• vegetables (squashes, beans, and possibly peas)
• nuts (walnuts, chestnuts, acorns, hickory nuts)
• dried fruits (raspberries, strawberries, grapes, cherries, blueberries, gooseberries)

The foods that Americans now traditionally eat for Thanksgiving are actually the result of a national day of thanksgiving that Americans celebrated in 1863, and which has been celebrated annually ever since.  Again, foods that were either readily available or had been stored for the winter were eaten — turkey, potatoes, cranberries, pumpkins, and more.

Since that time, Thanksgiving dinner has evolved and become much more a matter of personal taste and family tradition than a meal that celebrates another successful harvest and features seasonal foods.  There are debates on the different kinds of stuffing (cornbread, chestnut, etc.) and the different ways to prepare the turkey (roasted, deep fried, and even grilled) and one’s preferences are highly personal and usually based on family traditions.

Recycla has a challenge for you this year:  She wants you to try to serve foods that are available to you locally this time of the year — if not the entire meal, then try for just one or two parts of it.

Sounds difficult, doesn’t it?  It won’t be.

So what foods should you try to change a little?

Well, that’s going to vary, depending on where you live.

The Eco Women live in six different states spanning four time zones.  Here are a few examples of foods that would be available to them for  Thanksgiving if they were sticking to local and/or seasonal foods.  In this case, local foods would also include ingredients that were grown over the summer and preserved for the cold months.

• Recycla lives in Virginia, where cranberries would not normally be found, so she would eliminate cranberries from her meal.  Potatoes, sweet potatoes, and pumpkins are readily available.  Apples are plentiful in the Old Dominion, so it would make sense to have homemade applesauce, cooked apples, and/or apple pie.   She could make a butternut squash soup, roasted acorn squash, and/or cauliflower gratin.  Late fall greens, such as collards, spinach, and even some hardy lettuces would also be possible.  Pumpkin pie would definitely be on the menu.
• Eco Lassie lives in North Carolina, closer to the coast.  Oyster dressing for the turkey is very popular where she lives.
• Enviro Girl reports that up in Wisconsin, a Thanksgiving dinner that included local ingredients would include cranberries, squash, potatoes, corn, and beans.  She makes a sensational cranberry-walnut torte that is nice after a starchy meal.
• The Green Queen says that out in the Pacific Northwest, they would definitely have squash, corn, pumpkins, pears, apples, and potatoes.
• Up in New York, the Green Mommy says that apples are plentiful this time of year.

These are just some examples.  Those of you who live in the deep South, Southwest, or California have an amazing wealth of choices.  If you’re not really sure what’s available to you, check out your local farmers’ market and see what’s available.

If you are interested in learning more about eating seasonally and locally, Recycla encourages you to read Barbara Kingsolver’s wonderful book Animal, Vegetable Miracle (click here for a review), which talks about her family’s year-long experiment with eating locally.  She writes honestly about the challenges and pleasures of their endeavor.  She talks about Thanksgiving, of course, and devotes a very humorous chapter to turkeys, which is we all know is the most important part of the meal.

On Thursday, Recycla is going to talk more about turkeys and give you the low-down on what you should know.

So that’s the scoop on how to re-think your Thanksgiving meal.  Recycla challenges you to try to make your meal more seasonal. How you do this is entirely up to you, but she hopes you will make at least one change, great or small.  And, don’t forget to give thanks for the farmers who grew your potatoes, corn, and more.