Setting the Table
Turkey Day is coming! It’s amazing but my salivary glands start grinning when I even think about Turkey Day. It’s not just the Turkey either. It’s the whole shebang; turkey, gravy, stuffing, mashed potatoes, peas and mushrooms, fresh dinner rolls and real butter!
Yeah, I hear a few of you out there saying, “What about cranberries?” I save my sweet tooth for the Pumpkin Pie and Mincemeat pie with real whipped cream on top too!
Oh, again with the mumbling? “Mincemeat pie, who eats mincemeat pie? What is mince meat pie, anyway?”
Wiki says, The name ‘mincemeat’ comes from the original recipe. Up to the Victorian era the mince(meat) pie would actually have been a spiced meat pie with some dried fruit. Today the only remnant of the original meat is the inclusion of suet (dried beef or mutton fat).
Typically fillings today consist entirely of fruit-based mincemeat containing dried fruit such as raisins, currants, glace cherries, apricot, candied peel; spices such as cinnamon or nutmeg; nuts such as walnuts or chopped almonds; suet; and some kind of alcohol, usually either brandy or rum. Mince pies are suitable for vegetarians only if the suet is replaced by vegetable fat.
See, raisins, currants, glace cherries, apricot, candied peel; spices such as cinnamon or nutmeg; nuts such as walnuts or chopped almonds and suet, Mincemeat pie is not that bad. Well, I don’t know about suet but I like the rum or brandy idea!
There are a lot of other pies you can substitute and you can leave out the mushrooms and just have peas. Actually I know that there are a huge number of other “traditional” Thanksgiving Dinners with all sorts of substitutions flying this way and that. It’s not really the menu, it’s the celebration that’s important! Anything that brings families and friends together, to eat, drink and be merry is a real winner no matter what you eat.
It’s not that easy for everyone to get together these days. Life kind of has a way of separating families and friends. Jobs, school, we all have different paths that we follow. Some are luckier then others when the changes involve just a short distance. Others are separated by many miles and some even by oceans.
The economy being what it is today, makes it even harder for us to get together to celebrate. Although we seem to be blessed this year by unusually low gas prices (go figure, huh?) everything else is reaching for the sky.
We’ll make do. We always do. We’ll get in touch by phone or computer and wish each other well and we will be together in spirit if not in the flesh. Love always has a way to cross the boundaries that separate us. That’s the thing about families and friends. No matter where they are, they’re always there.
So Happy Thanksgiving! Wherever you are. Whoever you may be. As you set your tables this year. Be thankful for whatever is on it. Be thankful for life and loved ones. Think thoughts of peace and prosperity. Life may have it’s challenges, that’s what makes it interesting. We just have to be thankful for our ability to rise up to meet them. When you raise you glasses on Thanksgiving Day, give a toast to life and then eat a bunch of turkey for me!
By David Spangenburg
Tags:holiday,Holidaze,Thanksgiving
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