Happy Thanksgiving: Stay Home!

A goodly portion of this entry is reprinted from last year.

     

Image: a postcard sent out by Coldwell Banker realtors to their clients.

The foods of the Thanksgiving meal are probably my favorite--not the godawful "green bean casserole," but turkey, gravy, dressing, mashed potatoes, bread (this year there's been a request for biscuits and I will use this recipe), squash, cranberry sauce--once I learned how easy it is to make a stellar cranberry sauce, I can't ever go back to canned, and of course pie--varying from pumpkin, sweet potato, pecan, and apple + vanilla ice cream.  Sometimes roasted brussel sprouts.

This year I also will make a three pound round of no knead kalamata olive bread.  (Out here in Mormon land, one of the grocery chains sells 25 lb. bags of bread flour for $5.99!)

Friendsgiving.  Last year, I saw lots of articles about "Friendsgiving," holding Thanksgiving with friends ("Friendsgiving has become just as fraught as Thanksgiving ," New York Times), not family, but that is likely a very long tradition.

Certainly I have memories of such events of my own dating back to college, an experience which is also captured in a great essay by the author Ann Patchett, "Collecting Strays at the Thanksgiving Table."

Pandemic.  But this year there are no articles about Friendsgiving, but about how you should limit your Thanksgiving event to your immediate family, to prevent the spread of the coronavirus ("With people encouraged to stay home, what will Thanksgiving week travel look like this pandemic year?," Seattle Times).  

And don't go out to restaurants, as much as you might want to ("Don’t Eat Inside a Restaurant The risk of catching the coronavirus is much higher indoors," Atlantic).

Canada's Thanksgiving, held in October, has been a significant contributor to their rise in coronavirus cases now ("Canada’s Thanksgiving Brought a Surge of COVID-19 Cases: Will That Happen in the U.S.?," healthline, "Will the U.S. heed Canada's Thanksgiving lesson?," Politico).  Cases have risen about 150% since--from 2,000 per day to 4,776--and Toronto just went into a one month lockdown ("Toronto, Canada's largest city, put into lockdown as infections soar," CNN).

This digital ad for Whole Foods appeared on the Nextdoor neighborhood social media platform.

Relatedly, there are tons of articles on how you can buy thanksgiving dinner from independent and chain restaurants.  We always talk about it, but we like making the foods of thanksgiving, so it doesn't seem worth it.

We took the land.  The Boston Gobe's review of the book This Land is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving by GWU Professor David Silverman reminds us of the reality that the land we have, America, was taken from Native Americans.

KALW-FM, the public radio station in San Francisco, featured an interview with Professor Silverman.

-- "The Myths of the Thanksgiving Story and the Lasting Damage They Imbue," Smithsonian Magazine

This year the Globe has an interesting story on Plimoth Plantation, the re-enactment heritage park focused on the origin story of English settlement in Massachusetts.  Recently, the site was renamed Plimoth Patuxet Plantation, to directly include Native Americans, although the article argues the site has a long way to go to tell a richer, more complete and accurate story ("More than name change may be needed at former Plimoth Plantation").

The New York Times has an article, "The Thanksgiving Myth Gets a Deeper Look This Year," about greater efforts at re-examination of the mythology around Thanksgiving, and the putting forward of the Native American interpretation.  For decades, Native Americans in New England have termed Thanksgiving as a National Day of Mourning, to recognize the trials and tribulations in the face of English settlement.

Bon Appetit has an article about Native American chefs and Thanksgiving.  From the article:

To many Native people, reckoning with Thanksgiving can be difficult—for obvious reasons. This is partially why the I-Collective, an organization of indigenous chefs and activists across the country, was born ("Brit Reed is leading a new generation of indigenous chefs"). The group hosts Thanksgiving dinners with a decidedly different narrative, celebrating the resilience of their people and telling their stories through food.

Fats and Oils.  Don't forget that you shouldn't put fats and oils down the drain ("Why Can't You Pour Grease Down The Drain?," Business Insider) because it leads to fatbergs.  

According to this Mashed listicle, "Things you shouldn't put down your drain," lots of stuff shouldn't go down the garbage disposal.  It's better to compost.

Even though DC Water got lots of press coverage for their waste energy system using waste products in water to generate energy as well as reusable compost, and how DC code requires that kitchen sinks have disposals, DC Water says it's better to compost separately and not put stuff down the drain ("Do you like using your garbage disposal? The water company wishes you wouldn’t," Washington Post).

Helplines.  The New York Times reminds us that Butterball Turkeys has a help line and so does the "Splendid Table" radio show, which will broadcast a live radio call in show on cooking turkey from 12pm to 2pm Eastern Time.

-- Butterball Turkey Hot Line, 1-800-BUTTERBALL

Jewish, interfaith and immigrant groups hold a rally in front of the White House on Aug. 11 to commemorate the Jewish day of mourning by calling on the Trump administration to change its immigration policies. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)

We are all immigrants.  At the same time, Thanksgiving should remind us, given the anti-immigrant focus of the Trump Administration ("There’s no other way to explain Trump’s immigration policy. It’s just bigotry," Washington Post) and the alt-right, that every person in the United States, except for those of Native American descent, descends from immigrants, including people first brought here by force.  (Technically, Native Americans also immigrated, from Asia.)

-- "Gratitude once suffused America. Today, things are not as they should be," editorial, Washington Post

The LA Times food section has a video feature called "Off Menu." One episode looks at people who are food challenged, focusing on Skid Row and social enterprise ventures there.