Old Fashioned Thanksgiving

One of the reasons for leaving Alaska was to grow as much of our own food as possible and when November rolled around what better way to celebrate than to emulate the Pilgrim’s first feast with a feast of our own.  If they could make everything from scratch, so could we.  After all, we did move to the land of milk and honey!  We have oh so much to be thankful for!

The photo is of our “featured” guest as “he” came out of the cooking bag (the only non old fashioned part).  Probably the most flavorsome turkey we’ve ever eaten as well as a 1st for us all being that it was a wild bird.  The fact that it was arrow killed wasn’t too shabby either.  Wild turkeys are not butterballs in any way shape or form but don’t think for a minute the Pilgrims missed anything!

 

We also had cornbread stuffing made from leftover cornbread from corn that we grew and ground into meal, cranberries, a variety of pickles, sweet potatoes (the very first Ted’s ever grown), and deviled eggs from our own chickens.   Except the cranberries which were grown about 20 or so miles to the west of us and a few spices, milk, etc., everything on the table was of our own making.

Ted baked a cherry pie and Cindy made a couple of pumpkin pies from one of our winter squashes.  The whole wheat flour for the crusts we also ground (but didn’t grow not that we didn’t try) and the needed lard we  rendered as well.  Our own honey sweetened the pies.  Skimmed the cream off the milk we get from a neighbor and made whipped cream topping.  All in all quite simple and about as old fashioned a celebration feast as we could make it.

Oops!…….almost forgot…….our homemade cider served in wine glasses to wash it all down.