Heading off on a Culinary Adventure

The 21st Century Household is about to embark on a culinary adventure – six nights in the Big Apple dining at some of the city’s most famous and historic restaurants. We are celebrating the New Year, and a significant birthday in the life of the 21st Century Teenager. Making the gorgeous Art Deco palace, the Waldorf Astoria, the base for our stay, we will be bringing in the New Year at one of their famous gala dinners. Over the course of our visit, we will be dining at some of the city’s finest restaurants, including the Russian Tea Room and Rockefeller Centre’s historic supper club, The Rainbow Room. Watch this space as we journey into the delicious past, present and future of a remarkable city, the city like no other, New York, New York.

Saving Christmas Past

I remember Christmas in years gone by being much more relaxed and calm – and I am not just talking about the Christmases when I was a child and innocent of all the work it takes to create the ‘perfect ‘ Christmas. Even as recently as a few years ago, I remember a much more leisurely pace leading up to the big day. Yes, there was still a lot to do, but the frantic, grasping panic that exists today was definitely not a part of it. I don’t know if it is because we are all getting busier and busier, or if it is just an effect of the post-modern age, but everyone I meet this year is rushed off their feet, stressed and panicked. And I have to admit I’m feeling pretty much that way myself.

It used to be that folks shopping for Christmas would be in a jovial mood. People would smile cheerfully in the supermarket and there were always enough parking spaces at the mall. Now it’s a fight nearly to the death for the last parking space and only a few brave souls are smiling. People are either stressed out about how they are going to pay for all their shopping, or worried that they won’t get the right turkey or the last bag of Brussel sprouts. Most of us are pressed for time, pressed for cash and in far too much of a hurry to actually enjoy the festive season.

Everyone I know is looking for a shortcut – a way to a special Christmas that does not involve spending much time or much cash. Whilst I can understand the desire to be frugal, particularly this year, I’m sad to think that so many of us are in such a vortex of activity that we do not feel we have time to celebrate and honour the traditions we hold dear. I heard one lady say that she was not going to make a Christmas cake with her mother this year, even though they had made one together for the last thirty years. “I’m just buying it; it’s quicker.” I wondered how old her mother was, and how many more chances they would have to bake together. I watched another lady put ready made Christmas cookies into her shopping trolley while the little girl walking beside her protested, “But Mommy we always bake those together. I like icing them.” Her mother’s harassed stare and icy reply put paid to her protests.

Don’t get me wrong, I know what it is like to be pressed for time – and I have a huge amount of sympathy for both these frazzled women – but sacrificing our traditions is not the way forward.

It’s easy enough losing our traditions by mistake, let alone on purpose. Our recent move means that two of my handwritten recipe books containing old family recipes are currently somewhere in the last few boxes waiting to be unpacked. At least I hope they are. Only the happy accident of finding a scrap of paper with my Mom’s handwritten recipe for Meat Loaf Wellington on it saved the tradition of an old favourite main course being served in the weeks leading up to Christmas. My son informed me the other day that we were definitely making Christmas cookies from scratch this year because it has been three years since we have done so. I was genuinely shocked to realise he was telling the truth. The last three Christmases have been very difficult ones due to my parents’ illnesses – indeed by last Christmas my Dad had passed away and my Mom would follow him not long after - so I guess I sort of forgot about the cookie tradition. In retrospect, it would have been enormously comforting to spend just a few hours doing something as therapeutic as rolling out dough and icing cookies. In fact, I’m definitely looking forward to some cookie therapy over the next couple of days.

And therapeutic is exactly what tradition is. In fact I would go so far as to say that there is no greater remedy for melancholy than to revive an old tradition – or even to create a new one. And what better place is there for Christmas tradition than the kitchen? Food, family and friends have always been the centre of this most wonderful of holidays.

It troubles me that in all the hustle bustle of our post-modern Christmas, family traditions are often being lost and forgotten. In many cases, we are so busy trying to create the perfect Christmas we forget that what made Christmas seem perfect all those years ago is the traditions our parents and grandparents passed on to us. We risk a generation of children remembering Christmases filled with fraught, stressed parents and a distinct lack of goodwill if we carry on like this. We are trying to buy the perfect Christmas – and trying to find something in those very crowded shops that simply is not for sale is an absolute waste of our very precious time.

So forget about perfection. Roll up your sleeves and bake some cookies, or make your Auntie’s recipe for Christmas squares and serve them on the plate she left you. Talk about your memories of her over a cup of tea while enjoying them. Or take a walk in the crisp winter air, and come home to steaming coffee and pumpkin pie. Revisit some of the traditions you learned as a child, and share your memories of them with your own children, grandchildren or nieces and nephews. And while you are at it, create some Christmas traditions of your own. It needn’t be expensive – all it requires is a little time and a little love.

The perfect Christmas really is not about how much money you have or finding the perfect gift, it is about sharing that most precious of commodities - love. One of the best ways to do that is to share the traditions that helped make you who you are today. And who knows - saving Christmas Past might just help you find the perfect Christmas Present.

Cooking with Kids is for Life, Not Just for Christmas

Whether it is Christmas cookies in America, mince pies in England or any other number of delicious treats in a myriad of other countries, you can pretty much guarantee that this time of year there will be kids in the kitchen helping with the baking. It is fun for them, and fun for the grown up helping them too – a real part of the Christmas celebrations.

With some very rare exceptions, kids love to cook. There is something incredibly satisfying about making something for yourself and others to eat, particularly if it is something sweet and delicious. The thing I find kind of sad is that a lot of kids only cook at Christmas or for special occasions. We all want to raise happy, well-rounded children, so we teach them absolutely everything under the sun – except how to cook healthy food for themselves and their families to eat. In years gone by, most young people learned to cook at their parents’ side. Unfortunately in these days of not enough time, family members rushing off in different directions and ready prepared meals, that often does not happen.

Both cooking and eating together as a family are incredibly important. It’s something notable television cooks - from Rachael Ray to Jamie Oliver - encourage us to do. Rachael Ray’s Yum-O Foundation works to help empower families to develop healthy relationships with food and cooking. It is one of many groups attempting to change our relationship with cooking and food in our post-modern era. Yet somehow we are still a society where young people on the whole have diets that are not very healthy. A huge part of the reason for this is that they are not learning how to cook healthy nutritious meals with their families.

When I was a child, my mom and I spent a lot of time together in the kitchen making food for special occasions. So when I first arrived in England as a young woman, I was able to bake amazing cakes, cookies and desserts. But what I had never learned was how to cook was good, basic food. Luckily I found out I was good at cooking pasta dishes so I managed to eat pretty well for a while, and even had my fiancé convinced that I was an experienced cook. Then we moved in together and the issue of the Sunday roast reared its ugly head. I had no idea how to cook most meats or where to start when it came to cooking the ever popular British meal of “meat and two veg”. And when my husband to be suggested having people round for dinner I nearly had a nervous breakdown. Thankfully, he was incredibly encouraging when I made my first few attempts at more complicated home cooking. I was also an eager student, and between some very helpful cookbooks and some even more helpful friends, I began the learning process that made me the extremely keen cook I am today. And of course, throughout that process I did always have the comfort of knowing, that whatever happened to the main course, at least I could count on dessert tasting good!

A lot of young people today find themselves in the same position I did - on their own for the first time with little or no idea of how to cook. So when it comes time for dinner, they reach for a ready meal or takeaway. Not only is this not the most nutritious option, it is also the most expensive, at a time when budgets are generally very tight. Thanks to the very prevalent practice of only cooking with our children on special occasions, a huge proportion of this generation are growing up exactly as I did, and go out into the world not knowing how to cook for themselves.

There are a lot of mistaken assumptions about teaching kids to cook. The most common of these is that there is not enough time. But whatever you eat, from beans on toast to a three-course meal, it has to be prepared. There is almost no reason that children cannot be involved in this. Although they may be too young to handle a knife or work with high temperatures, even the youngest of children can do basic tasks, such as stirring things together, tearing lettuce leaves for salad or peeling fresh corn. It just takes a tiny bit of patience on the part of the supervising adult. As children grow older, they can gradually become involved in the more complicated parts of food preparation. Depending on the age of the child, they can begin to prepare vegetables and even put together whole meals.

I’ve been cooking with my son for a number of years now. From his first adventures in the kitchen at the age of three decorating cookies, he has progressed over the years to making complete meals. We often work together to prepare meals and I involve him in everything, from deciding what to cook right down to serving it. Not only does this mean I can pass my knowledge, it also allows us to spend time together sharing our experiences and taking about life, the universe and everything. When special occasions do arise, I teach him the old family recipes I have found in my mom’s recipe file or we work together on a project for the holidays. For example, this year we have been asked to bring a cake to the family Christmas celebrations. Up until a couple of weeks ago, I had only ever made a Christmas cake once, so this was a bit of a challenge. However, it was one both my son and I have relished as we have tried various different recipes, tasting and weighing up which is our favourite, in order to choose the recipe we will make for Christmas.

The time I spend in the kitchen with my son is special for both of us. When he is able to, my husband joins us as well, and we all enjoy not only the fruits of our labours, but the conversation and laughter that is a part of the preparations. Of course, we cannot cook together every day, but even if I am cooking alone, I make sure how what I have cooked is prepared. He is busy studying for exams today, but I spent ten minutes earlier telling him exactly how I was preparing our roast beef for dinner – from what cut of beef we enjoy the most to how I season it and how long I cook it for. So he now has the basic knowledge to cook a roast of beef. One day we’ll do it together and he will be able to add experience to that knowledge.

It’s not difficult to involve children and young people in family cooking and there are lots of different ways to approach it. As I have described, I try to include my son wherever possible in the preparation of our meals – and as a rule I do that at least once or twice a week. There are also lots of other ways to go about it. At the BBC Good Food Show, I watched a cookery demonstration by the amazing Nigella Lawson. I listened to her describe how she encourages each of her children to cook for the family once per week. She asks each child to cook the same dish of their choice each week for a month. So whether it be spaghetti carbonara or chicken soup, by the time the month is out, each child has not only had the experience of feeding their family, they have also cooked one recipe four times, learning from their mistakes, and adding another dish to their cooking repertoire. One of my friends has three children, and she lets them loose all together in the kitchen one night a week, getting them to prepare three courses for the family to share. They work together on the menu, and each child is responsible for preparing one of the courses.

However you choose to do it, I believe it is crucial that we as adults make a concerted effort to teach the children in our lives how to cook a wide variety of foods. Not only does it mean we can pass down family recipes and anecdotes, but it allows us to equip the next generation of children with some of the most basic survival information there is – how to feed themselves. It is not rocket science, but it is vitally important. If we do not do this, we risk losing not only some of our precious family traditions, but also the practice of sharing our food together. Research recently highlighted the fact that only twenty percent of families in the US sit down together at a table regularly to eat a meal. If we continue on this way not only will we lose the precious interaction of family mealtime, but we also risk raising a generation of children dependent on other people – be they restaurants or large companies who prepare ready meals – for their most basic need. This is not something that even bears thinking about.

Teaching our children to cook is a lifetime project, a joyful sharing of the wonderful traditions of food and eating we all enjoy. Cooking with kids really is for life, not just for Christmas.

Post Modern Christmas Turkey Dilemma

It’s not a good time of year for turkeys. First there’s Thanksgiving and then only a month later, it’s Christmas. Not only are supermarkets full of turkeys, but local farms and specialty butchers are advertising them as well. This time of year, turkeys are definitely an endangered species. Of course I do not mean this is the case for them corporately in terms of a species, but as individuals, they are definitely candidates for a least likely to survive the season award.

But when it comes to your Christmas turkey, does it really matter what kind you choose? Is it that important to worry about how your turkey has been raised and what it has eaten? And furthermore, does buying an organic turkey mean that you will have a better tasting bird?

The answer to all three of these questions is yes. Believe it or not, your choice of turkey not only affects the success of your Christmas dinner, it actually impacts on your family’s health and even the environment.

Most of us have been purchasing turkeys that have been intensively reared for years. Intensively reared turkeys are often kept in windowless ‘houses’ with as many as 25,000 birds in one house. I was told by a friend about a visit he made to a turkey farm and how horrific it was, picking his way amongst the very unhappy birds, who were frantically pecking at each other to try to get some space. This crowding and lack of stimulation can often cause the turkeys to become aggressive and even cannibalistic. In fact, intensively reared turkeys are often de-beaked to prevent this. Furthermore, these crowded conditions often lead to disease spreading throughout the flock. To avoid this, the birds may be preventatively medicated with antibiotics. Sometimes they are even given growth hormones to make them develop faster. When you buy and eat intensively reared turkeys, some of these chemical residues are extremely likely to be passed on to you.

An free range organic turkey is a different thing altogether. They are raised mostly outdoors with more space allocated per bird. Grain fed, they are never given feed which may contain animal byproducts, and their grain cannot be genetically modified in any way. Organic turkeys are not medicated unless they are actually ill, and this is done only as a last resort. This more natural way of life is not only better for the turkey, it is better for you, Organic turkeys generally have leaner meat, developing more muscle and less fat than intensively reared turkeys which get virtually no exercise whatsoever.

Lots of people will argue that they have been eating intensively reared turkeys for years and it hasn’t done them any harm, nor do they feel they have been deprived in the taste department. But have they ever tasted a free range bird that has been raised organically? If they are sticking to their argument, probably not. Organic turkey definitely tastes better. The meat is leaner and is a better source of protein than the intensively raised alternative.

Not only is organically raised turkey better for you, it is better for the environment because organic farming methods are less disruptive to local ecosystems and are not dependent on the use of chemicals and drugs. Organic farmers work in harmony with nature to ensure biodiversity and sustainability. It is also much kinder to the animals involved as they are raised more naturally, and allowed to develop for longer.

So when you choose your turkey this Christmas, I urge you to purchase an organic bird. It may be slightly more expensive, but not only will you enjoy the flavor more, you will also be benefitting the environment and your family’s health. It’s an investment not only in the taste of Christmas present, but also in the taste of Christmas future.

Post Thanksgiving Credit Crunch Christmas Blues

Thanksgiving has always heralded that start of the holidays in America, and traditionally people are pretty much in the holiday spirit from then on. Similarly, in other countries including Canada and England, the first day of December heralds the start of the festive season. This year however, something seems to be amiss. People worldwide seem to be more cautious about their holiday joy. Everyone is talking about cancelling Christmas parties, or at the very least scaling them down. The stores are packed full of Christmas shoppers as they always are this time of year, but most of them look stressed and worried. So do the shopkeepers. Suddenly we are faced with the unavoidable truth. We have all become so commercial about the holidays that a lot of folks are feeling very blue indeed. We feel our celebrations are threatened because we have to tighten our belts. I’m here to tell you that does not have to be the case.

I’m not about to suggest that you can ignore the credit crunch, or the fact that most of the world seems to be sliding into recession. I can insist however that it does not have to affect your holiday celebrations. In the last few years of plenty, we all got pretty used to holiday extravagance. Where we used to drink wine, champagne became the norm. Luxury ingredients like foie gras, truffles and caviar, once the preserve of only the very rich, moved into the diet of the middle classes. In some cases, the importance of these luxuries overtook the importance of the celebrations. We were all out to impress, whether it was by what we ordered in a restaurant, or what we served when we entertained. Within the big corporates, there was practically a competition as to who could put on the best (ie. most extravagant) Christmas entertainment. We forgot that entertaining and being entertained is all about having fun and connecting with other people. It is not what you eat or drink or where you party. Yet suddenly we all seem to think that because we can’t put on the Ritz like we used to, it isn’t worth bothering to celebrate at all. Well, that is just pure nonsense.

You can have a very glitzy party without breaking the bank. It would be such a shame to abandon entertaining because you feel somehow inadequate, or that you can’t live up to impossible standards. With some rare exceptions, most people just want to have a bit of fun with their friends, colleagues and families during the holidays. I certainly do not go to a party expecting a particular standard of entertainment, nor do I judge what is served or where it is held. I’m pleased to have been invited and happy to have the opportunity to celebrate with others – and I am willing to bet most other people feel the same way. Frankly, if they don’t, do you really want them at your party anyway?

So here are some ideas for entertaining this holiday season that will still keep the glamour in the holidays without breaking the bank. To start with, one of the best kept secrets in London is that good Proscecco (Italian sparkling wine) can, in many cases, taste better than some champagnes. It is not too sweet and has a crisp, dry finish. And at about one third the price of champagne, it’s a great way to keep the sparkle in your entertaining without champagne prices. It’s lovely straight, or you can mix it with a bit of Kir (blackberry liqueur) or Chambord (raspberry liqueur). Just pour a tiny drop in the bottom of a champagne glass and top up with Proscecco. It’s delicious and looks gorgeous. You can also use it in champagne cocktails in place of the real thing. It’s unlikely anyone will even notice.

If you are planning a dinner party, ring the changes and serve comfort food. Not only do people love it, it usually costs a lot less to prepare than other things. Coq au Vin, Boeuf Bourginion, even good old stew can make a fabulous main course. I served traditional British sausage and mash at a dinner party recently and everyone raved about how wonderful it was to eat something so comforting and delicious.. I made sure to use excellent quality sausages from a great butcher and served a nice, warming bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon alongside. The evening was a resounding success and it cost a good deal less than my dinner parties normally do. We even had champagne cocktails to start – with Prosecco of course!

Really hard up? Invite friends and family to a pot luck supper. These used to be all the rage when I was growing up and frankly, it’s time we resurrected them. With everyone bringing a dish, the costs to the host are kept to a minimum. Ask folks to bring a bottle as well – nobody minds and they would probably have brought one as a hostess gift anyway! Of course you need to know what everyone is bringing to avoid the horror of twelve salads and no main course, but that’s just easy organisational stuff anyone can sort out. You can even do this with cocktail parties. Ask everyone to bring one kind of cold canapé or some nibbles and a bottle of their favourite drink. As the host you could provide one fabulous hot canapé and lots of soft drinks and juices. Consider making punch if anyone brings a bottle of rum or vodka. Or you could make mulled wine, which is wonderfully warming and goes a long way as it is very strong. My favourite recipe involves studding an oranges with cloves and slicing a further two oranges. Add all the oranges to a large saucepan along with a bottle of gutsy red wine (try Merlot or Cabernet Sauvignon), 4 ounces of brandy or Grand Marnier, 2 tablespoons of brown sugar, a cinnamon stick and a bit of grated nutmeg. Heat gently over very low heat until it is a comfortable drinking temperature – not too hot. Serve in small (heat proof) glasses. This is not just for reasons of economy – it’s very intoxicating!

You can jazz up your house for a big party without breaking the bank as well. Remember paper chains and stringing popcorn for decorations? What about homemade cookie decorations for your tree? All of these are a charmingly retro way of embracing the spirit of the 1950’s and 60’s. They also cost next to nothing and are a great way of involving the kids in the decorating.

So light up a log fire, crack open the Prosecco, mull some wine and invite your friends round for a real celebration. There is absolutely no need for the Post Thanksgiving Credit Crunch Christmas Blues. With a bit of creativity and a spirit of fun, you can entertain just like you always have. Credit crunch or no credit crunch, here’s to a wonderful Holiday Season 2008!

A Goat By Any Other Name Still Would Not Smell Sweet

There is another ingredient out there that is used in the kitchens of fine restaurants with almost as much frequency as the ubiquitous foie gras. It’s even turning up on some Christmas menus this year! Produced in most countries in the world, this cheese has many fans world wide. Sadly I am not one of them. So I set out to discover more about this very popular cheese I would really love to enjoy, but just cannot seem to.

The ingredient I am referring to is, of course, goat’s cheese. Now I have been trying to like goat’s cheese for about fifteen years now. I can remember the first time I tasted it, taking a piece from a cheese platter at a dinner party. We were chatting about the cheeses on the platter and when I asked what kind of cheese this particular one was the reply was “chevre”. I was very good at French in school and I do manage to get by when we visit my husband’s old school friends in France, but I'd had a couple glasses of wine and it took me a minute to remember that chevre meant goat. Just about as much time as it took me to get the cheese to my lips in fact.

I cannot honestly say that I tasted that piece of cheese in an unbiased manner, as the horror of the word I had just translated in my head was only just beginning to seep through. Nothing against goats you understand, but having been forced to participate in numerous school trips to local farms as a child I was not a huge fan of these animals. The thing about goats for me is that they look so cute from a distance, but when you get close up they look dirty and the smell, well, let’s just not go there. Not only that, but they tend to nip when you feed them – rather painfully in fact – although I was assured this was just nuzzling. Yeah right.

So the piece of cheese I was tasting immediately took on a life of its own, and all those overwhelming farmyard smells of the past assailed my brain. I just managed to swallow the piece of cheese I was eating. I did not, I decided, like goat’s cheese at all.

This is a real shame, because goat’s cheese is actually incredibly good for you. Easier to digest than cheese made from cow’s milk and full of calcium and nutrients, it’s smaller fat globules make it easier to digest than bovine alternatives. It’s also an incredibly versatile cooking ingredient and is lower in cholesterol than cheese made from cow’s milk.

Everyone else I know seems to love goat’s cheese. Not only that, but they are vocal campaigners for it. Whenever I have had the temerity to admit I don’t actually like it, I find folks are very quick to come to its defence. Their major argument is that not all goat’s cheese tastes the same. This is very true. In fact, the French goat’s cheese I tasted the first time was probably the strongest sort available, due to the diet consumed by French goats. You see goat’s cheese tastes different depending on where it is made. The diet goats eat varies wildly from country to country. For example, while Canadian goat’s cheese is quite mildly flavoured, Spanish goat’s cheese is more distinctive as the goats eat wild herbs. English goat’s cheese tastes different yet again. Incidentally, the old wives’ tale that goats will eat garbage if they are allowed to is not true. Goats are just naturally curious and will nibble anything just to find out what it is (including my fingers). However they won’t actually eat it, indeed goat farmers are quick to point out that goats are actually quite fussy and will refuse poor quality food.

The other good thing about goat’s cheese is that most of it is made in a way that makes it suitable for vegetarians. This means you can use it when cooking for vegetarians and non-vegetarians alike, a real boon if you have both carnivores and herbivores coming to dinner. This does raise a problem for me though.

Although I am far from vegetarian, I love vegetarian food and often like to order it in restaurants. Unfortunately, more and more, the vegetarian choice on a lot of menus includes goat’s cheese. One of my favourite vegetarian pizzas in our local pizzeria is now off limits for me as they have replaced the mozzarella with goat’s cheese, much to my intense disappointment. In fact, in most restaurants I have been to recently, there is a surfeit of dishes containing this ingredient. It’s almost getting hard to avoid!

So, I have continued to attempt to like goat’s cheese. Over the last few months, I have re-tasted the French variety, sampled Italian Caprino, British goat’s cheese, Canadian goat’s cheese and everything in between. I have tasted crumbly White Nancy and I have even sampled the hysterically named Welsh Pantysgawn. (Okay it doesn’t sound funny if you pronounce it correctly in Welsh, but if you pronounce it phonetically – well, I’ll leave you to do that for yourselves.)

I really, truly, do not like any of the goat’s cheeses I have tasted, and goodness knows I have tried to! Now goat farmers will insist that improved farming methods and hygiene have ensured that goat’s cheese no longer has the terrible smell it’s reputation has been tarnished with, and I agree that is the case, but it still does not help. I have even tasted goat’s cheese not knowing it was goat’s cheese and somehow knew from the taste what it was.

So sadly for me, I don’t think I will ever be a convert to this amazing cheese. I’d urge everyone else to try it though. You can eat it as it comes with bread or crackers or you can cook with it very successfully. I’m told it is lovely toasted or even fried, and friends of mine have recipes for everything from peppers with lentils and goats cheese to roasted tomato and goat’s cheese tart. You can even make cheesecake with it! Added to its versatility are the clear health benefits of a cheese that is lower in cholesterol, calories and fat than other cheeses.

Sounds like a wonderful cheese for the 21st Century. Perhaps I’ll just give it one more try…

Happy Thanksgiving

I’m sure most everyone in the United States is already getting excited about Thanksgiving. It’s not long now till the fourth Thursday in November. Growing up in Canada, I always thought that Americans had it right when it came to celebrating Thanksgiving. Although the holiday weekend was a big deal in Canada, we only got one day off school, not two. We did have big family dinners, but it seemed to me that the ones in America looked much more exciting. We had parades as well, but who could compete with the spectacular balloons of Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade in New York? So I never felt that passionately about Canadian Thanksgiving. As the Canadian ancestors in my family tree travelled to America on the Mayflower (but later fled to Canada as United Empire Loyalists), I liked the pilgrim story. It was much more interesting than dusty old explorers Martin Frobisher and Samuel de Champlain celebrating with the Indians. This opinion made me very unpopular with patriotic teachers in primary school. I did love the family get-togethers and Thanksgiving food, and of course, I was grateful for all the blessings I had, but it wasn’t until I left Canada in 1989, that I suddenly realised how much I loved Thanksgiving.

I came to this realisation because Thanksgiving just didn’t seem to exist here in England. The first year I lived here, the second Monday in October came and went, and no mention was made of Thanksgiving. As my fiancées family had lived in the United States for several years I nurtured the faint hope that they might celebrate Thanksgiving in November, but that didn’t materialise either. I never said anything, because I was at the point in my life where I didn’t want to stand out. I was the new kid on the block – okay I was the immigrant – and hated to mention anything that made me seem any more foreign than I already felt. But as a married woman two years later, I decided that we would celebrate Thanksgiving, and we would celebrate it the second Monday in October just as my family always had. Unfortunately I had no idea just how difficult that was going to be. My first stop was, of course, the grocery store. Finding the usual Thanksgiving ingredients seemed like it would be fairly easy in Autumnal England. Potatoes were readily available, and vegetables of every description lined the shelves of the produce department. It was not until I got to the meat department that my problems began. I looked everywhere for a turkey but there was none to be found. I went to the butcher counter to ask the man himself. After I made my request, the butcher looked at me as though I had asked for something very exotic, like maybe ostrich or boar.

“Turkeys?” he asked. “Yes, please, “ I replied. “You won’t find fresh turkeys this time of year, only at Christmas. You might find a frozen one though”. He looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. Three grocery stores later and I was still in the same boat. No one had fresh turkey and the frozen ones were clearly left over from Christmas 1985 (this was 1991), totally frosted up and unappetising. There wasn’t a Butterball to be found. You should have seen the butcher’s face in the store where I asked for those! “Butter’s in the dairy section,” was only the beginning. In the end all I had for my first Thanksgiving dinner in England was some potatoes, vegetables and some very dodgy looking packaged stuffing. Not only that, but my request for cranberry sauce had been met with utter confusion. Ocean Spray wouldn’t make it over here for several years after that. So in the end I cooked a chicken. The stuffing tasted rather strange to me and without the cranberry sauce, well, as far as I was concerned, it could have been any old Sunday lunch. There was not even any pumpkin pie. It was very disappointing. Over the years I coped by either arranging to be in Canada for Thanksgiving or by smuggling jars of cranberry sauce and packages of Stove Top stuffing back in my luggage after our Canadian summer vacations. But if it was Thanksgiving in England, it was always chicken. The past five or six years have been so chaotic for us I hardly even thought about making Thanksgiving dinner, except the times we were in Canada with my Dad and Mom. But their deaths twelve and eleven months ago respectively suddenly made me crave the Thanksgiving tradition again. It was important to me to celebrate not only Thanksgiving itself, but also the happy memories I have of them at Thanksgiving. This year, cooking Thanksgiving dinner was a little different. I still had to cook chicken, but the rest of the ingredients were much easier. I managed to find a supplier of Stove Top stuffing here in England. Okay, it makes my hair curl paying the equivalent seven dollars for something I could have bought for $1.99 in Canada, but for a treat, it’s worth it. And I found proper Ocean Spray Cranberry Sauce here too. We finally got Ocean Spray products about seven years ago, but this year I even found the sauce with whole berries like I used to buy in Canada – oh joy! And my son helped me make the dinner. While he peeled parsnips I shared my secrets for a homemade Butterball. If you buy a big chicken, lift the skin up off the breast and slide a few pieces of butter in underneath you get an effect not unlike a Butterball turkey. I also showed him how to make a pumpkin pie using Libby’s Tinned Pumpkin – in my opinion, the only way to go. But that’s another column.

And when we sat down to steaming plates heaving with juicy chicken (which I insisted on referring to as turkey), stuffing, mashed potatoes, roast parsnips, leeks and gravy it was with glad and thankful hearts. We rejoiced in our blessings, toasted absent friends and family, talked about happy memories and celebrated Thanksgiving as never before. So spare a thought for friends and family abroad when you celebrate Thanksgiving. Remember that sometimes it isn’t easy to keep to traditions and think how much you’d miss them if you couldn’t. It even makes listening to the same old stories for the seven hundredth time or keeping Great Aunt Mildred out of the sherry seem like fun. Wherever and whenever you celebrate, I wish you many blessings, and a very Happy Thanksgiving.