By Bruce and Kären Love
Thursday is Thanksgiving Day, and I thought this would be the perfect time to share some information that may help readers celebrate the holiday. Unfortunately, my culinary skills are very limited, and it’s highly unlikely that any reader would be giving thanks for any turkey tips that I might be able to offer. Fortunately, my wife has extraordinary abilities in the kitchen (as well as on the Internet) and she has agreed to help me out with this week’s column. As she is quick to point out, she has been bringing out the best in turkeys for nearly 25 years. Coincidently (I think) this is the same amount of time she has known me! So, here’s Kären (pronounced “car in”) to share some tips that could make your Thanksgiving Day a success!
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As a preschool teacher, I spend a good bit of time researching online for new crafts that will catch the interest of my four- and five-year-old students. This month we have been discussing with the children what Thanksgiving is all about. When the question was posed, “Who can tell me about Thanksgiving?,” the majority of the class responded with “It’s the Turkey Day!” One boy explained that it was a day for a lot of television at home. Another child said that they were going to go eat at Nana’s and Pap’s.
None of the children said anything about pilgrims or Native Americans, or about giving thanks to God for all that we have in our lives. I was surprised and a bit disappointed, so I decided to go on a hunt for projects that would help teach the true essence of Thanksgiving. Inevitably, my search turned up a lot of turkeys along the way, but I finally found a Web site that offered many terrific tidbits of trivia. The site is feast for history buffs and featured many food facts and other fun projects - free for the taking. The information was well organized and many of the links were well worth the additional time to visit (see http://www.theholidayspot.com/thanksgiving).
After visiting “TheHolidaySpot" I decided to run a search on Plymouth Rock and made a pilgrimage to http://pilgrims.net/plymouth where I, as a history and genealogy maven, found myself wanting to linger a while and check out many of the links to see if I could find a few of my ancestors who have been on this great continent for centuries. I will make a return visit very soon.
Alright, I confess that Thanksgiving is a feasting celebration, so food is important. I do not enjoy eating dry turkey and I have a fear of food poisoning so I recommend making a stop at www.Perdue.com. This site is easy to navigate and is full of helpful information on preparation, scheduling, recipes for the feast and the leftovers, and safe food handling tips. I also recommend:
www.rd.com/content/openContent.do?contentId=13894.
Many people refer to Thanksgiving as Turkey Day. Certainly, the feast is a part of it, but Thanksgiving is not all about the turkey. It’s about family, about heritage, and about giving thanks to our Creator for everything that we have.
Happy Thanksgiving!
