Thanksgiving Food

December 13, 2005

When I think of Thanksgiving I can almost smell the turkey, cornbread stuffing, and sweet potatoes. In my mind Thanksgiving is a tradition of food, friends and good times together. My family spends Thanksgiving on Cumberland Island. We have family friends that have a family home, Stafford. On Thanksgiving, twenty-five people gather around the enormous dining room table and share a fantastic Thanksgiving feast.

For dinner we have two turkeys: one roasted, one deep-fried, a Turducken (which is part turkey, part duck, part chicken), spicy cornbread stuffing, mild cornbread stuffing, mashed regular potatoes, mashed sweet potatoes with melted marshmallows on top, collard greens, two kinds of cranberry sauce: fresh homemade and the canned gelatinous kind, and for dessert we have pie, a different kind every year.

Cumberland Island is one of the Georgia barrier islands near the coast of Florida. On the island there are no stores, so we have to plan what to shop for, we have to buy all of the ingredients for all of the food that we plan to cook that week, before we leave the mainland. It is really interesting going shopping with my family before we leave, because we really have to pay attention to what we buy because if we forget something we can't just run to the store for it; we have to take the long boat ride to the mainland to get it.

My favorite Thanksgiving food is the mild cornbread stuffing. It is made from fresh baked cornbread, fresh venison sausage that was hunted on the island, and sautéed vegetables. I like it because the sausage is mild but slightly spiced up, and the cornbread is slightly sweet so with the sausage it makes a perfect combination of sweet and spicy.

Cumberland Island is about eleven miles long and one mile wide, and it has thirty buildings on it, mostly all of them are old tabby buildings from the late nineteenth century. it is surrounded by beach on one side and marsh on the other. Three-fourths of it is dense woody areas, inaccessible by car. On the island there are many wild animals: wild horses, boar, deer, armadillos, alligators, bobcats and many more, people mainly hunt only the deer and boar during managed hunts.

The mashed potatoes are good also, but of course both kinds of potatoes are completely different. I like them both but personally, I prefer the classic, buttery, salty white potatoes, but the sweet crispy marshmallows on the sweet potatoes really makes the dish come together because in my opinion, without the marshmallow topping the potatoes would be slightly bland and chalky. So I think that they are good exactly how they are!

Thanksgiving is a really good food oriented family tradition that is fun, exciting, and full of good holiday spirit.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Isis (not her real name) is fourteen years old and is really interested in food because her dad is a good cook. She was practically raised in a Vietnamese restaurant, and as a baby ate her first solid foods there, which were rice noodles. She tries most foods that are offered to her and her parents urge her to also. For example, when she was 7 years old, she was at a French restaurant and her parents were having snails and they easily talked her into trying them. They ended up being pretty good! Isis takes ballet, plays soccer, sings in a choir, and loves to travel. Isis went to Italy for two weeks and when she came back she went on and on about the food, especially the gelato. Isis thinks that if you are going to eat, why not eat well if you can? There seems to be no reason not to.

Email questions or comments for these two young women to webmaster@drgourmet.com.