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THANKSGIVING: A CELEBRATION OF REAL FOOD Sometime last century, we evolved from home-cooked meals using basic ingredients, to manufactured chemistry experiments served up in a tin or box or plastic bag. This Thanksgiving, let’s return to our roots, and celebrate “real” food. Recently, numerous authors, notably Barbara Kingsolver and Michael Pollan, have examined the origins and nature of the food we eat. What they discovered was a labyrinth of distribution networks, often over thousands of miles, and a Pandora’s Box of ingredients, including unpronounceable chemical additives. Yet health experts tell us fresh (and ideally locally-grown) food is best for flavor and nutrition, with simple preparations trumping elaborate concoctions of industrially-processed foods. Just such “real” food was served in 1621, at the harvest celebration shared by the Plymouth colonists and the Wampanoag Indians. The historical record suggests a menu of venison and wild fowl; probably seafood, corn and pumpkin; and possibly chestnuts and acorns. Potatoes were scarce; milk and eggs were nonexistent; and no marshmallow-sweetened yams or Stove Top Stuffing graced their harvest table. Now fast forward to 2005. Author Barbara Kingsolver and her family decided to eat for a year on (mostly) locally-grown food. So what was on the menu for their Thanksgiving feast? Roast turkey was the centerpiece -- stuffed with home-baked bread flavored with broth, onions, garlic, celery, chestnuts, sage, and thyme. Roasted sweet potatoes, braised winter squash, sautéed green beans with chestnuts, corn pudding, and mashed potatoes accompanied the main course. For dessert, a Queensland blue pumpkin morphed into pumpkin pie. Only cranberries traveled far to the family’s Thanksgiving table. So why do the Pilgrims’ Thanksgiving feast and the Kingsolvers’ holiday meal qualify as “real” food? According to author Michael Pollan, “real” food is simply prepared, with only a few ingredients, all recognizable (and pronounceable). The Pilgrims had this criterion covered due to limited resources. The most complex dish at the Kingsolver table was most likely the stuffing. Pollan also notes that the best predictor of a healthy diet is home cooking, certainly a feature of the Pilgrim feast. The Kingsolver family too prepared their meal at home on their Kentucky farm, enjoying the shared experience. Finally, Pollan concludes that “real” food for most twenty-first century Americans should be primarily plant-based. The early colonists and Native Americans did not honor this rule because their very arduous lives required more protein and animal fats. Modern Thanksgiving meals, like the Kingsolvers’, usually feature lots of vegetable dishes to accompany the turkey. In fact Pollan believes that a traditional Thanksgiving dinner is a great example of “real” food (especially if the turkey is pasture-raised), while a McDonald’s combo meal is probably not. So as we gather together for this favorite of American holidays, let us give thanks for simple unadulterated food. In the words of Barbara Kingsolver: “Here is a day off work just to praise Creation: the turkey, the squash, and the corn, these things that ate and drank sunshine, grass, mud, and rain, and then in the shortening days laid down their lives for our welfare.” Kathleen Arcuri Published in The Benton News, November 1, 2009 |
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Kathy’s Garden Writing |