Thanksgiving #1
Thanksgiving dinner is so not something that Australia does. We hear about it a lot, but we tend not to celebrate it. Why? Maybe because mayflower is rare around here. (should I apologise for puns?)
Actually (and more seriously) it is a lot to do with the nature of the early English settlers and the level and type of religion they bore with them. At one stage in our (Australian) history the most important religion was rum. We even had a Rum Rebellion (which was a pretty rummy rebellion at that). No, I’m not apologising for bad jokes today. I’m obviously unreclaimably silly.
Where immigrants come from affects the food their descendants eat - look at the Dutch foodways still present in parts of New York State or the German-style wines made in the Barossa Valley (South Australia). Don’t look at the French-style cheeses from Tasmania - some foodways come later. Much later.
What immigrants believe affects foodways. Melbourne has a lot of dyed eggs available around Easter, and has had them since the 1970s. New York has mostly-kosher bagels (oy, does New York have bagels! - which reminds me that every single bagel recipe I’ve found comes out as cakey - I am on a quest for the perfect bagel dough).
All of this is by way of background, to explain that Thanksgiving is many things to many people and that most of those people are in the USA.
A friend has given me some Thanksgiving recipes, which I’ll put in another post. Not enough recipes for a feast. And there lies the rub (no, I’m going to refrain and *not* make a cooking joke). How can an Australian Jew blog a Thanksgiving Feast?
Here’s how. I will post my friend’s kind comments and recipes sometime soon. If there’s anything you enjoy during your Thanksgiving, any family recipe that’s begging to be shared and that’s missing, please feel free to add it in the comments or send it to me in the next couple of days (if you send it in the next couple of days I can give it its own post and you will be famous for 10 full seconds). We will start with cornbread from Arkansas and by the time Thanksgiving is over, any sane turkeys will be hiding under their beds. (Do sane turkeys have beds? )
November 19th, 2006 at 7:23 pm
It’s interesting because I guess in North America we assume that everyone celebrates Thanksgiving - at least I know that I do! Is there some sort of equivalent celebration for Australians?
November 19th, 2006 at 8:42 pm
Not really. We’re a more secular nation in many ways. There are lots of holidays, but nothing quite like Thanksgiving. We have Australia Day (also known to many as National Sorry Day because it celebrates white settlement, but never officially) on 26 January, but there’s no food attached to it and no family get-together. It’s often just an excuse for a long weekend. Like the Queen’s Birthday. No nationaly-celebrated big sit-down dinners except for people who have Christmas, I suspect.