Savoring a special holiday over the years

VIC LEIPZIG AND LOU MURRAY

Thanksgiving smells better than any other holiday. Our day will start

early in the morning as we simmer turkey giblets with celery tops and

homegrown sage. While the broth for the homemade stuffing is cooking,

we will saute chopped onions and celery in butter to add to it. Yes,

we both cook.

I make butterscotch-bottomed yeast rolls from scratch, a tradition

from my family. By the time the turkey is roasting in the oven, the

whole house will be filled with the aroma of this special holiday.

Overtones of cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg will add to the fragrant

melange as we roll pie dough for the pumpkin and apple pies. Last

minute preparations include mashed potatoes and Vic’s turkey gravy,

made from the drippings in the roasting pan. Vic’s other specialty is

candied yams, cooked in a skillet with brown sugar and butter. We

round out the meal with Waldorf salad, cranberry sauce, and green

beans seasoned with onions and bacon. A heart surgeon would have

apoplexy at the spread that graces our sideboard.

What Americans eat and how they cook it for Thanksgiving has

changed somewhat over time. The first Thanksgiving dinner in

Plymouth, Mass. was a three-day feast celebrated in the fall of 1621.

The Pilgrims ate what they hunted, gathered or grew in their gardens.

They had waterfowl, wild turkeys, cod, sea bass, shellfish, beans,

and dishes made with corn meal such as Johnny cakes. The Pilgrims may

have stewed pumpkins or winter squash, but they didn’t make pumpkin

pie or cranberry sauce. The entire feast would have been cooked in

heavy cast iron skillets or kettles over a fire. The Native American

guests contributed venison to the banquet.

Menus and cooking methods evolved with the times. I have a

Kentucky cookbook from 1839 that suggests stuffing a wild turkey with

chopped smoked beef tongue, ham, bread crumbs, butter, sage, nutmeg

and egg yolks and then boiling the bird. That cooking method was in

use before the days of succulent domestic turkeys with huge breasts.

The development of cast iron cooking stoves made it possible to roast

a stuffed bird in an oven.

President Abraham Lincoln declared a national day of Thanksgiving

in 1863. By 1884, roasted and stuffed turkey, sweet potatoes, mashed

white potatoes, cranberry sauce and mincemeat and pumpkin pies were

on the menu. Our traditional Thanksgiving foods have changed little

since then.

Other things have changed, however. In the early days of this

country, people lived close to the land. A relatively large area

supported relatively few people. For example, estimates are that only

about 10,000 to 15,000 Native Americans lived in what would become

the greater Los Angeles-Orange County area when the Spaniards arrived

to stay in the late 1700s.

Our population has burgeoned since then. Today, about 13 million

people live in that same area, a thousand-fold increase. The days of

living off the land or depending upon market hunters for meat are

long past. We now depend upon big agribusiness, more efficient

farming practices and rapid modern transportation to supply what we

eat.

Almost all of our food arrives by truck or train from outside

Orange County. Some comes by ship or air from foreign countries. How

could we possibly survive without importing food from outside our

area? A mere 50 years ago, Huntington Beach was a major producer of

celery, lima beans and tomatoes. Strawberry fields persisted until

fairly recently. Now we are a community of wall-to-wall housing that

is dependent upon food that is brought in from all over the world.

On this Thanksgiving Day, we are thankful that we have an

abundance of food. We are thankful that such a tremendous variety of

international foodstuffs is available to us. Our biggest hassle this

Thanksgiving was getting the ingredients that we needed for our meal

without crossing a picket line.

If the world population continues to grow unchecked, however,

eventually we humans will outstrip the ability of the land and sea to

feed us. Another concern is that in less than a century, the oil that

powers our transportation industry will run out. Unless practical and

inexpensive alternate forms of transportation are developed, we will

be unable to transport food efficiently and cost effectively.

On this Thanksgiving Day, we will stuff ourselves with traditional

dishes prepared as our grandmothers made them. We will give thanks

for our many past and present blessings. And then we will face the

challenges of the future.

* VIC LEIPZIG and LOU MURRAY are Huntington Beach residents and

environmentalists. They can be reached at [email protected].