Showing posts with label ABC THURSDAY. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ABC THURSDAY. Show all posts

25 Nov 2010

THANKSGIVING SEEN FROM ABROAD

Jenny Matlock
more participants at Jenny Matlock's Alphabet Thursday

Before I started blogging I didn't really know what Thanksgiving meant. I had only seen on TV when an American President showed up with a fat turkey and then saved him from the stove. We found that rather funny.

Of course we don't celebrate Thanksgiving as we didn't sail with the Mayflower to another continent but stayed here. Not even I have a great, great, great etc. uncle who was on that boat ! I digged a little in history and learned that only 54 from the original 102 pilgrims survived the cruise and only because they were fed by 91 Indians (today called American Natives). If they would have known what happened later, they probably would have eaten their harvest alone. For them it wasn't really a thanks giving celebration for the next +/- 360 years.

I also knew from my aunt's letters when she celebrated Thanksgiving with friends and family. She had married an American just after the war and was my mother's sister. She sent lots of recepes to prepare a good stuffed turkey, which we had then on Christmas, when they showed up in Germany. Before we had chicken.

When Europeans first encountered turkeys in the America Continent, they thought they were imported through Turkey and that name stuck as the name of the bird. It's amazing what I learn in Wikipedia !

In Waterloo there are lots of Americans living and therefore the stores stocked fat deepfreezed turkeys imported from the States together with all ingredients which usually you can't find here, but business is business.


Our turkeys can live a little longer, at least until Christmas.

I wish all my American friends a very happy Thanksgiving and please put a little piece of turkey for me aside !




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