Celebrate!
For those of us who live in the USA, Thanksgiving is our major holiday for November, and so Thanksgiving provides our theme for this month. But if you’ve already celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving, or if you’re in a country where it’s not a holiday at all, not to worry. Who says you need a holiday in order to give thanks?
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We Honor… |
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Since Thanksgiving is a holiday that centers on food and cooking, this month we honor Fannie Farmer, whose cook book introduced a whole new way of cooking, using science, accurate measurement and awareness of nutrition.
In her curriculum Spirit of Adventure Kate Tweedy Covey writes this about Fannie Farmer:
The publication of Fannie Farmer's 1896 cookbook, The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, was an event in cooking history and in making domestic life a bit easier for family cooks, most of whom were women: she included very specific and accurate measurements. Before that cookbook, ingredient lists were estimates. "Your results will vary" was a phrase yet to become popular, but it sure described the older style recipes!
Red-haired, brisk, energetic and opinionated — and endowed with a very good appetite — Fannie was fascinated by every aspect of food. James Beard remembered reading that she loved restaurants and would often put a little sample of a dish she liked into her handkerchief to take home and try to recreate it. She would also go down to Boston Harbor when a French ship had docked to taste what the French chef had to offer and maybe have a talk with him.
Fannie Farmer had a far greater influence on American home cooking than we realize. Not only did she call for careful measuring (she was known as the mother of level measurements), but she was well ahead of her time in imparting important nutritional information to her readers. She told them how to judge the freshness of fish, how to select good poultry and game, what cuts of meat to buy, and what was important to a well-balanced diet. She deplored the poor bread of the day, believing that bread was our most important food. The bread recipes in her early books are exceptionally good (my favorite is her Water Bread). She stressed buying fresh eggs, instead of the common practice then of buying "cooking eggs" which were older and cheaper. She was both an intelligent teacher and a passionate cook. |
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Act!
Thanksgiving is the time of year when many food banks or food pantries rely on getting donations to help people who might not be able to afford food to enjoy their holidays. A good small November project is to go through your cupboards or make a special trip to the grocery store to collect canned goods or other foods that won’t spoil to donate to your local food bank. Or, if you’re up for a bigger project, organize your church, your school or your neighborhood to collect food to donate together. Or ask the food pantry for a list of items they would most like to have and make a flier with that information to hand out to people as they go into the grocery store. You can be outside waiting with a barrel or laundry hamper or bunch of bags to take donations of food for the food pantry. Of course, you’ll need a grown-up with you on this project (preferably one who has agreed to drive the donations to the food pantry). Or get a wagon and a grownup and go around to your neighbors, asking them to make contributions of food that you can take to your local food pantry.
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Nurturing Your Spirit
One of the most important spiritual practices the world over is that of gratitude, being thankful for all of the countless gifts that life gives us. Maybe you’d like to make November Thanksgiving Month, rather than just celebrating Thanksgiving Day. No, I’m not suggesting you eat turkey every day for a month, let alone pumpkin pie. But there are lots of things you can do to practice giving thanks. For instance, you can:
- Start a practice at bedtime or dinnertime of having every person in the family name one thing they are grateful for that day. Try to come up with something different every day!
- Keep a gratitude journal, in which you write down all the things you are grateful for. How many can you come up with? Feel free to e-mail me your list at RE@clfuu.org, and let me know if you’d like it posted on this page.
- Make a gratitude collage, cutting out pictures from old magazines (ask permission first!) that remind you of things you’re thankful for and gluing them onto a piece of paper or posterboard.
- Send thank you notes to family or friends, letting them know what you appreciate about who they are or what they do.
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Principles in Practice
Thanksgiving seems like a good time to focus on our sixth principle, “Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.” Part of being thankful for life is to remember that we are a small part of a much larger whole, and that our lives depend upon many other lives. Maybe if you will be having a Thanksgiving feast you can figure out all the living beings involved in what you will be eating (not just the turkey, but also the cranberries, and the cows who gave milk for butter and the people who baked the bread and….). You can write a special thank you prayer that names them all, which you could share at Thanksgiving dinner.
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