Traditional Thanksgiving Food In History

Traditional Thanksgiving Food in History
When we talk about Thanksgiving, the traditional celebration feast automatically comes to our mind, in its entire splendor and grandeur. The annual occasionof Thanksgiving is, in fact, considered as a day to feast, celebrate and give thanks. The dinner is usually served in the afternoon. Friends and family members get together to commemorate and rejoicethe occasion and indulge in a variety of mouth-watering delicacies, like stuffed potatoes, casseroles and desserts. What tops the list is the traditional turkey recipe, which is considered as the maincourse of the meal, served along with the innumerous side dishes. The recipes to prepare these dishes are usually handed down from generation to generation. The little influence that we see in thepreparations is due to modernization as well as intermingling of cultures.

Contrary to the popular belief, the pumpkin pie, cornbread, roasted turkey and all the Thanksgiving paraphernalia that wesee on the Thanksgiving Dinner table do not owe their root to the original Thanksgiving meal of the Pilgrims. In 1621, a harvest festival was celebrated by the colonists or the Pilgrims, to thank Godfor saving their lives and guiding them through their journey in Mayflower and the following years of draught at Plymouth. After the rain that marked the end of the draught and revived the crop of cornand other fruits, they decided to celebrate the day with their neighbors or Massasoit, the chief of the Native Indians or Wampanoags, and his family. He came with all his extended family thatconstituted ninety people and stayed for three days.

Colonists were, of course, in bad shape and there were only four grown up married ladies left to do all the cooking. Thus, General Bradford sent four ofhis soldiers to hunt for fowls, who brought such a large number with them that it could feed the whole village for a week. Wampanoags also helped in supplementing the food supplies by contributing...