So I am a bit bewildered. How did it get to be Thanksgiving? I think we
must have skipped a month while I wasn't looking. So, I have a plan. Two
years ago, my mom came to visit and give me the "how to prepare a
turkey" lesson. We had a lovely Thanksgiving dinner, she flew home and
Di and I were stuck with many remaining pounds of bird. Eventually, I
started to harass all guests to the house and demand that they help eat
the turkey whether they wanted to or not. This was not a good thing.
Last year, Di and I had prawns provencal. Not very traditional, but we
enjoyed it. However, we eat that a lot, especially since meeting the new
upstairs neighbour with the prawn traps. My plan this year is a
compromise: special poultry dinner but not to drag on for days- we
bought a cornish game hen. :) Just right for the two of us for one meal.
Plus we can have some local squash. I got a spaghetti squash. I was
driving down the road and there was a sign, "Free squash"- one of the
benefits of living in the middle of nowhere. [Aside: I will always
remember the time that J&T asked about preparing spaghetti squash
and I explained that it is nice to cut 'em in half, add some butter and
SPRINKLE with brown sugar, wrap in tin foil and bake in oven. Somehow,
this was an instance of broken telephone, since was ensued was a squash
with the entire empty depression in the middle FILLED with brown sugar
for some scary sweet squash soup! Ick! Almost as bad as the
hyper-vanilla "Pleasure Dome" for a lesson on how there can be too much
of a good thing.]
I must confess there is another motive for my
merely semi-tradition Thanksgiving. Every day I walk to work past the WH
stables. In the late summer/early fall, they raise not only horses, but
turkey. Seeing these turkey, even these one living the good life of a
free range bird, has made me reluctant to eat one. I was never the city
girl who thought food originated at the grocery store, but I do find it
different when I am acquainted with the birds most likely to show up at
the local store. I mean the poor things are so colossally stupid, it
seems like taking advantage of them, or eating Weirdo the local mentally
deficient cat [I suppose Weirdo has a real name, but I dubbed her
Weirdo and it stuck]. One day I was walking home and a large number of
them had escaped through a small hole in the fence. They were milling
around on the road and by the fence in a senseless manner. I tried to
gently chase them back into the field and panic ensued. They ran around
like the proverbial chickens with their heads chopped off, running into
things (mainly the fence which would hit them at neck level and they
would fall over). After a couple of minutes of this, and utterly failing
to catch one (since I now know how to catch a chicken*, I thought maybe
I could catch a turkey), I decided I was doing more harm than good, so I
continued home and looked up the stable in the phone book and left them
a message about their wayward turkeys.
I hope everyone has a
lovely long weekend and that it does not RAIN. Today here it is not
grey, which is a nice surprise. Enjoy your meals and I hope you don't
overdose on turkey (nor let my squeamishness hinder your enjoyment- you
are not likely to be acquainted with your dinners after all). Happy
thanksgiving.
*footnote: Chicken catching story- 1.5 years ago I
was sitting at my breakfast table looking out the window across the
field. I saw something russet moving in the bushes and like a good
Ontario girl I thought, 'oh, it's a fox' but Di said there are no foxes
on the Island. This claim made sense because if there were foxes
(apparently weaker swimmers than wolves) on the Island, we would not be
beset with thousands of bunny rabbits [Rabbits are a real problem here.
The yard in front of the hospital is so riddled with rabbit holes that
people get injured attempting to enter the building and falling down
rabbit holes]. So, I put on my glasses. Not only was it not a fox, it
would consider a fox its enemy- it was a chicken! What was a chicken
doing in the bushes? It was caught and talking to itself in a
consternated manner. I coaxed it out of the bushes and tried to convince
it... yes, I'm not kidding... to cross the road- to go to the house
that sold eggs, since that stuck me as its most likely home. Di wanted
to take pictures. The bird made sounds that seemed to say, "oh, I don't
know about this... I don't think I'm supposed to be here..." Every time I
tried to pick it up, it would flap and struggle away. Then our friend
(bassist and worker on a chicken farm) rode by on his bike. Within 30 s
he had the chicken by the feet, holding it upside down, crossed the road
and returned it to its home. Quite the adventure for a city girl on a
Saturday morn.
No comments:
Post a Comment