Boing
25.11.2009
25 November - Night before Thanksgiving
Leaping forward in space and time, imagine if you will, that you've already read the blogs on New York City, our arrival and first weeks in Temecula, our train trip up the Pacific Coast, stopover in Seattle and our two weeks in Vancouver, Canada ... they're coming but, for the moment, we're back in Temecula, California and it's the night before Thanksgiving.
Feeling bloated and a little tipsy from a hearty pizza dinner at Fillipi's, family and friends have begun to descend. Tomorrow, my gracious hostess informs me, there is to be 22 adults, 8 children and well 3 dogs (I think) for Thanksgiving. In an enormous home, all rooms and couches are full tonight and, as I write this, I hear voices downstairs in animated conversation.
Despite impending Thanksgiving celebrations, I never knew or thought to ask what it all means. To me it was simply 'that American holiday from the movies'. From the lively and most reliable source "Wikipedia" (sic) it seems that Thanksgiving is a harvest festival, however there seems to be some argument between wikipedia and wikipedia on this point as the same source on one hand says it's a harvest festival and on the other something to do with some Spanish folk who showed up somewhere by Florida, and then of course there's the pilgrims - maybe I was better not to bother looking into it. The harvest festival precept for an autumnal celebration makes some sense because why oh why would intelligent American women get stuck with the enormous job of cooking for squillions of people so close to Christmas only to turn around a month later and do it all again?
I dredge the cinematic pastiche in my mind of this all-American holiday and what spews forth is a montage of: children performing badly in elaborate turkey costumes, blokes drinking beer in lounges bursting with NFL (Dallas Cowboys v Raiders tomorrow) while women have major heart to hearts about serious life issues or just get on each other's nerves in the kitchen, presidential turkey pardons, travel delays and traffic jams, fancy orange leaf designs and huge feasts.
Anyway, forget for a moment that I have this shallow and flimsy understanding of this holiday and look at these great pumpkins pies baked fresh this morning:
(I beat some eggs and, with help, took the lids off the cans of pie filling. My culinary prowess is growing.)
Today was spent hovering and helping with some small Thanksgiving preparations and carousing in the somewhat incongruous Southern Californian sun. Tomorrow? We'll I'll tell you about that later. Maybe.
Post Script: Thanksgiving over now. A predictably giddy and chaotic event. Much good food and conversation with only the minimum of interpersonal ructions.
filling out of cans???? Did the sweet little maple leaves come out of cans too?? Ah well - the writing is good and original!
26.11.2009 by Dayll