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["Toni Hawryluk" <tonihawr AT msn.com>]

.. from Nat Geog kid's section, but maybe the adults could

do with a "refresher", too ?



http://news.nationalgeographic.com/kids/2003/11/thanksgiving.html<http://news.nationalgeographic.com/kids/2003/11/thanksgiving.html>

 

The Truth Behind Thanksgiving Dinner 

By Sarah Ives

National Geographic News

November 24, 2003

"Pass the deer and eel please!" Are these words you would expect to hear 
around your Thanksgiving dinner table? 

When most people think of a traditional U.S. Thanksgiving dinner, they think 
of turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and maybe apple pie. The 
original American Thanksgiving dinner in 1621, however, was very different. 

In the fall of 1621, 52 Pilgrims and 90 Native Americans came together in 
Plymouth, Massachusetts, for meals celebrating the harvest. Although 
Thanksgiving did not become an official holiday until 1863, most Americans 
consider the Plymouth feast as the first Thanksgiving. 

The food that these early Americans shared was not what most people would 
expect. 

Pilgrims and Native Americans probably ate turkey. Mashed potatoes, cranberry 
sauce, and apple pie, however, were not on the menu. 

In 1621, potatoes were not part of the Pilgrims' diet. According to Kathleen 
Curtin, most Pilgrims had never heard of potatoes-potatoes grew only in South 
America until the late 1600s. Curtin is a food historian at Plimoth 
Plantation, a living-history museum in Massachusetts. 

The Pilgrims and Native Americans may have eaten cranberries, but certainly 
not cranberry sauce. Sugar, an important ingredient in cranberry sauce, had 
probably not yet traveled to the New World. According to Curtin, "It would be 
50 years before an Englishman mentioned boiling this New England berry with 
sugar." 

But the Pilgrims must have eaten apple pie? Surprisingly, they did not. 
Apples do not naturally grow in North America. The fruit didn't come to the 
United States until years later. 

So what, then, did people eat at the first Thanksgiving? 

The meals and festivities lasted for three days. During that time, the early 
Americans ate a lot of food. They probably had deer, clams, dried berries, 
corn, wild turkeys, and fish such as cod, sea bass, and eels. 

And the meat did not come in packages from the grocery store. 

"Animals were often cooked with heads and feet still attached. The 'humbles' 
[what we would call guts] were cooked and eaten as well," Carolyn Travers, a 
researcher at Plimoth Plantation, explained. 

This Thanksgiving, as you dig in, be thankful you're eating turkey and 
pie-and not baked guts!