Taste of a pioneer Thanksgiving November 5 2018

An early Thanksgiving and a culinary history lesson :
This weekend we visited the pioneer homestead in a forest preserve nearby. It is a replica of an early settler’s home. A few ladies organized and hosted the wonderful throwback Thanksgiving dinner. As I was looking for a pared down Thanksgiving this year,( I agree, the previous ones were progressively becoming excessive! due to many reasons 😋), the visit was doubly helpful and timely. But above all, the short trip was very satisfying - the curvy road through the autumn hued forest, a river flowing along the side, the deer peeking through the trees and darting across at times, all leading to the little wood cabin.

Like a fairy tale setting, with the tall yellow leaved trees and ravines in the background, the little cabin sat daintily in the clearing. The little front porch with its wooden benches invited us in to the golden warmth of the house. The soft light of candles added to the ambience. This apparently used to be the main room with its wood floors and fireplace. There were cast iron pots hanging over the fire in the hearth, in which a soup with locally picked mushroom and herbs, and a persimmon bread pudding was getting cooked. A wooden staircase led to the loft/attic like area upstirs. It had a small window overlooking the forest. There were looms, churns, and other home appliances displayed here.

Outside, close to the house is a little vegetable patch. A little away, in a Dutch oven with fire over and underneath, a chunk of venison was being slowly cooked along with carrots, parsnips and celery. There were heavenly corn fritters, and cranberry sauce , all cooked the old fashioned way. The bread was homemade and it had homemade goat cheese on it. There were walnuts, pecans, and chestnuts, all available back then in the area. Even the persimmons are from around there!

The gracious ladies, all dressed in period costumes explained that in a mid level household in the 1800s, a typical Thanksgiving dinner consisted of pork, and wild fowl like goose and duck. Turkey was not that much prevalent. Apples were, and so were squashes and beans and nuts, and of course, bread. They liked vegetables in a creamy sauce too.

This lead me to read further about old Thanksgivings, say, around the 1600s, when even the current staples like potatoes, wheat flour , cranberries, and sweet potatoes were absent. That took me to the 1800s, and to Sarah Josepha Hale, an editor of a ladies magazine who tirelessly worked to bring about the modern Thanksgiving traditions. Amazing . Amazing woman! She convinced President Lincoln to declare the Thanksgiving day as a holiday, pointing out that it will unify the Civil War ravaged country. Do read about her. (Btw, her Thanksgiving menu shows that I still have scope to expand my menu! Thankfully, I will follow the Midwest one, more similar to this little cabin one)

All along, that little cabin reminds me, we dont really need that much, do we? A little place with not much ”stuff” so that when we leave we dont leave as much debris for others to sift through. And that fire! That, I am sure would have awakened some shared, warm, collective memories from our buried primeval pasts in the minds of all those who came there!

And what an engaging way to preserve and share the history of a place! This of course is not a rarity here. Wish we did something like this back home!