Thanksgiving

It took me a few years to figure out thanksgiving after we moved to Canada. But now I definitely get it. No-longer kids make strenous efforts to get home, you invite people for dinner who are far away from home (and might not "get" thanksgiving either). Days are spent fretting about what to make for dinner, with text messages back and forth either begging for nut roast, or begging not to have nut roast. You spend hours chopping veggies, baking and cooking, so that finally there are no more pots to use in the kitchen. The dishwasher chooses to break down just prior to the weekend and the dishwasher repair man refuses to visit until after the weekend is over. And through it all, and despite all the effort, everyone is so pleased to be together that the weekend and thanksgiving dinner are way beyond fun.

Thanksgiving doesn't happen in the UK, but when I was growing up we did have harvest festival at church. We had to bring baskets of produce from our gardens (and increasingly as the years went by, cans from our cupboards), which we carried in a crocodile from the school at the back of the graveyard, round the corner to the church. The church was always decorated to the hilt with michelmas daises, lashed in the umbrella stands, something that the vicar of the time, Rev Clift, particularly disliked. We would stagger up the aisles with our loaded baskets and hand them over to him at the steps to the sancturary where he would place them all around the altar.

I was musing this year about the difference between Canada's thanksgiving and the US and thanks to the yarn harlot found out that the first North American Thanksgiving was celebrated when explorer (and pirate) Martin Frobisher stood on Baffin Island in 1578 and gave thanks for safely crossing the Atlantic. Similarly the French settlers, having crossed the ocean and arrived in Canada with explorer Samuel de Champlain, held huge feasts of thanks. Apparently they formed 'The Order of Good Cheer' and shared their food with their Indian neighbours.

I always thought that thanksgiving was instigated by the pilgrim fathers after they had survived a year of hardship in the New World and had been taught how to grow squash, corn and beans, something I romanticised after having survived our first year in Canada. However, apparently the history is not as simple as it seems, and although the traditions that began with the Mayflower were carried North when the loyalists fled during the American revolution, there are other threads that are important to remember.

As the years go by family stories are retold and embelished. It is ARGs birthday at this time of year, and many times she has celebrated her birthday at Thanksgiving dinner, with pumpkin pie in lieu of birthday cake. This time we decided to have a birthday dinner on Saturday night, followed by Thanksgiving dinner on Sunday night -- just to stretch out the overeating. But we remembered as we do every year that before I "got" thanksgiving I just used to ignore it. So, once when she was 10 or so, and her Aunt asked ARG what she wanted for her birthday, she embarrassed us to no end by saying that she just wanted to go and eat turkey at their house. It worked I guess -- after that I made sure to cook Thanksgiving dinner. And bit by bit, over the years, I began to understand the importance of celebrating Thanksgiving and gathering around to be thankful for good food, good families and good friends.

Sagas of my blender

I have a blender -- a beautiful Cuisinart model in black rubber and stainless steel that matches the food processor, dishwasher and other appliances. I look at my blender from time to time, and feel asssured. Finally, I have arrived at a place in my life where I can have an expensive toy in my kitchen. It's a luxury, a real power toy. I don't play with it often, but when I do, it delivers velvety soups and creamy dresssings that no other food processor or blender can match.

I'm fairly possesive about my blender. I really don't like other people to touch it, but sometimes I try to play nicely and let them have a go. Christmas day for instance. ARG was home, and having announced some time ago that she had never tasted lobster, it seemed to be the perfect special occasion to make lobster bisque. It also seemed to be a friendly Mummy kind of thing to do to let my girl play with the blender. I did say, "don't put too much of that bisque in at once", but no sooner were the words out of my mouth than bloop, the lid blew off and boiling soup rained down over the counter top. Her Daddy rushed to save her from the nasty machine and bad mother, but not having been allowed to play with the power toy himself, unscrewed the base and let the remains of the bisque flow out over the counter and on to the floor where the dog's tongue was waiting.

This weekend I gave my man a second chance with the blender. He was lurking in the kitchen, waiting for dinner to make itself. Again, it seemed a friendly thing to do to let him have control of the machine. I set him making the Duma dressing from Get it Ripe. It requires chopping an onion and throwing it into the blender along with oil, vinegar, nutritional yeast and some herbs, a real macho kind of recipe. HG complained that the blender was leaving lumps, and it sounded a bit rough at high speed, but I didn't think much about it until we sat down to eat the salad. A few mouthfuls in I found myself chewing on a hard lump. It had a bit of give, but refused to break down as I chewed on. Fishing it out of my mouth I found a small flat piece of grey silicone. Somehow, HG had managed to blend the gasket that fits between the blades and the glass jug. How can the gasket have ended up inside the glass jug? HG has a theory that the blender pulled it in because the jug wasn't screwed together tightly. I have my own theories on the matter, starting with no-one understands the sheer power and beauty of my blender.