Thanksgiving 2008

Thanksgiving is a great excuse to bake more than one pie. After all we are celebrating the harvest and being grateful for our families and food...

This year we went to my parents' house for dinner. My mother, as usual, did a fantastic job and brought together all the favourites - roast turkey, gravy, cranberry sauce, stuffing (our tradition is to use bagels in the stuffing so it doesn't get soggy), mashed potatoes, green and yellow beans, and mashed turnip (a nod to my mother's Nova Scotian heritage). A truly Herculean effort on her part. Only when I started to be responsible for the large family dinners did I realize just how much work it was. Mom always made it seem so easy. I provided the pumpkin and apple pies for dessert. Oh yes and there was some whipped cream too (do calories count on Thanksgiving?)

When I was young teenager, we lived in a house around Bayview and York Mills in North Toronto. We had the distinction of having a working wood stove fitted into our basement. My Dad installed it in the seventies as a reaction to the "energy crisis" of that time. He attached it to our heating duct system so it provided not only heat but also a place to cook. During that time I recall on Sundays (and of course Thanksgiving) my mom cooking roasts and baking in the oven. She was able to teach me how to use the wood stove to cook and bake since she grew up with a wood stove in her house in rural Nova Scotia. I helped when I could since most of my weekend time in those days was spent doing homework and studying. Then, as now, I loved to bake and it's interesting for me to reflect on my honing my baking skills in those days with my mom's help and the wood stove in the city.

My dad (who loves jokes that manipulate language) enjoyed my comment that my making two homemade pies today, I was like a pioneer ("pie"-oneer).

My mom generously gave me the remains of the turkey to make soup. That is my project for today - homemade turkey, vegetable and rice soup. Some people throw the bones etc. away but I was taught to use up their goodness by making delicious soup - I guess I do have a bit of pioneer inside me.