Posted on 11/18/2012 8:28:40 AM PST by carlo3b
Remembering Thanksgiving Day The Mayflower 1620- 2002
The voyage of the Mayflower in 1620 from Plymouth England, to Plymouth Rock started as a journey to find peace and justice in a new world. It began as a fervent prayer to give freedom a chance, and remains today as the promise each year for a new beginning. Thanksgiving Day is a celebration of hope, and remembrance.
Today, we bring our families and friends together to share our tables and our hearts, and give thanks for all that we have to be grateful for in our new and glorious country. From this grand experiment and it's courageous settlers, to the greatest nation of the world, we have a lot to be thankful for, indeed.
Remembering Thanksgiving
My earliest memory of Thanksgiving was the fuss of preparation of the wonderful food being prepared in advance of our holiday feast. Being a traditional Italian American, midwestern home, a full cornucopia of cookies of every ethnicity was in abundance. Thanksgiving morning was a special treat with a home filled with the scent of baking bread, and roasted turkey which transformed our tiny cold water flat in "Little Italy" on the lower East side of Chicago into a 3 room palace. Everyone was involved, family and friends, young and old, with 4 generations of our own majestic women.
An unspoken but respected hierarchy prevailed, with the eldest women in control, and a dance like rhythm appeared to take charge of this traditional and noble endeavor. It didn't take long before our small kitchen and dinning room filled, and every flat surface was covered. People scurried into the hallway, where neighbors shuffled pans and pots in and out of their homes to their own kitchens to make room for more, always more so everyone could share in the abundance.
The Preparations
Preparation started days earlier, with the making of the pasta. I recall my great aunt bringing in the clothesline from our back porch, the one that strung across the small yard to the adjacent porch and back. She washed and bleached this cord to string across our living and dining rooms, from sconces to chandelier, and doorjambs to windowsills. It was strung as tight as possible to hold the pounds of lasagna noodle, and spaghetti needed to hang dry, to satisfy the hearty Italian appetites. I recall as if it were yesterday listening to our nightly radio programs with the shadows of stringing pasta on the faded floral wallpaper, lending an eerie overtone to the Green hornet, or Gangbusters.
How could I ever forget opening my eyes in the morning with the sight of hanging pasta overhead, but then, why in the world would I want to forget that magical moment after all, and what it meant to a young boy that a wonderful and glorious holiday was just around the corner?
The Family and Friends
Each family was represented in the choice of menu items. Every wonderful cook in each branch of the family offered to prepare their own special version of the chosen food. This made for a memorable feast indeed, there were at least 4 successful individual restaurant owners in our family. The competition was playful and fun filled, with chunks of bread, ladles, and spoons dipping into everything, testing, tasting, and teasing.
The Cooks
It should not be construed that the food preparation was the exclusive province of our family women, to do so would be to underestimate the culinary contributions of some of the finest cooks in the clan. A few of my uncles, cousins and grandpa were cooks in the Army, Navy, and Marines, as well as in their own restaurants.
My great uncle served as a cook in the Italian army, then captured and recruited to cook in the prisoner-of-war camp, when upon his release, served 2 tours as a cook in the US Marines during The Korean War. However, whatever greatness the men may have achieved in the outside world, the kitchen was ruled by those formidable, yet diminutive, strikingly gorgeous, black clad matriarchs of the family. Great grandmothers from both sides of the lineage, grandmothers, great grandmother-in-laws, and great great aunts. Man I'll tell ya, it was a sight to behold at best, and an Italian culinary rivalry at least. Although sharing an Italian heritage, the 6 uncles married outside the Calabrian niche, creating a scrumptious provincial food fight.
The Kids
Children weren't immune from the holiday chores. Chairs were pulled up to the stove for short perpetual stirrers. The teens were given the sink, for the neverending pots and pans, and preteens were runners for last minute fetches and food deliveries. I was honored almost exclusively with the delivery of food for the church and hospital shut-ins because I had the bike with a giant basket.
Trying to describe my cousins and most of the local kids wasn't hard, the first thing I recall was, hair, lots of black hair, big doe eyes, dozens of beautiful children with wide grins. At least one kid, sometimes more, was forced to bring his or her accordion, and at every holiday gathering some poor child was browbeaten into playing "Lady Of Spain"!
The Holiday Table
Serving 30-40 people, in a one bedroom apartment on the 3rd floor, rear, walkup, was a challenge, but doable. It took the coordination of most of our wonderful neighbors, and the cooperation of all of the residence, which were always invited anyway. Everyone brought pots, pans, dishes, and utensils, at least a chair, and some brought their kitchen tables.
Everyone brought something eatable, most were prearranged as in bread, but some were heirloom dessert recipes, enough for at least a good spoonful, for everyone to get a taste. Older adults, always got a chair at the table, all adults got a seat, and kids sat at the card tables, on the stairs or on a carpet in front of the radio in one of the neighbors homes.
The Prayer
All kids had to be within earshot of the saying of the formal Grace before dinner. Then everyone recited their own prayer in various languages of their native tongue. Our family and friends were of many faiths and nationalities, the overwhelming majority of coarse were Italian. Most remembered a loved one not present, and the names of every absent serviceman and woman were individually read aloud. With all heads bowed, everyone gave thanks for the wonderful gifts of food and health, and each and every person present, gave a special thanks and how grateful they were for being in the United States of America.
The Family
Any good excuse to gather the clan in our family was and still is, paramount. Weddings, holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, births, baptisms and unfortunately funerals are used as good excuses to get together and, you guessed it.... eat. This is usually done at the familial home of eldest member of the family. The Italian family circle is close and tight, and many families still living within their hometown, even today, live within walking distance of one another.
In our family, as in many, brothers, sisters, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins grow as one family unit. The elders live within the homes of their offspring or siblings. The hierarchy is established by the ability of the surviving parents to have living arrangements central to the greatest number of kids and kin. Love of family is the reason, and love of food is the cement. Thanksgiving is one of the most popular days of the year, and has been since my earliest memory. Even today as I did with my parents in my youth, I talk to each of my 5 children and grandchildren, almost everyday, and have even when we lived thousands of miles away... I am truly blessed.
The Food
Food for an Italian holiday is second to only to the family. Present at every holiday feast were several types of entree, lasagna, ham, veal, and one or more specialty pasta and of course the giant stuffed Turkeys. There were Kosher dishes aplenty for our many Jewish friends. Our next door neighbor kept a Kosher kitchen and always shared their wonderful food with us as we did in return.
Not counted as entrees were homemade sausages, meatballs, and grilled peppers. A strange calzone, one I recall with nuts and octopus was always somewhere on the table as was braciole (Italian beef rolls, and great cannoli desserts were always compliments of our Sicilian side of the family).
Salads and antipasto were a mainstay, with favorites cellentani con Insalata di Peperoni (cellentani with pepper salad), and the ever popular soups, usually a bean, as in minestrone. Breads, rolls, pizza and a mixed variety of biscotti, were always in abundance. Side dishes were a meal in themselves.
A vast array of vegetables prepared as specialty items, like artichoke and bacon frittata rounded out every holiday meal. Even our popular lasagne, the recipe that created a chain of famous restaurants, has broccoli or spinach as a principle ingredient to the recipe. Desserts... oh my, great custards, and pastries, ice creams and cakes such as lemon berry tiramisu or frittelle di zucca (pumpkin fritters)
The Moment of Truth
My grandfather sat at the head of the table, and next to him sat a gallon jug of his homemade Italian red wine. Almost everyone seated for dinner were given a glass of his wine, if only for the many toasts that were posed, to the cooks and a milieu of other celebrations. The moment of truth came when he would call the name of the boys that he felt were to be worthy of manhood, a scholarship know only to him, usually by some unknown merit method.
If you attained that status in his trusted eye, he would invite you to accept a glass of wine and he would toast your new position and with everyone's applause you drank a glass and thanked him.
When my moment came, I had just turned 10, and having worked with him on his paper stand in downtown Chicago for 3 years and to my surprise he felt I was ready! Proudly I swallowed a huge gulp, and felt the heat go down my throat and explode at the core of my stomach and began to rush back up. I forced a smiled and swallowed again and hugged him as tight as I could, until my uncle secretly handed me a chunk of bread, which I bit into and forced down before I let my pa loose, perhaps in the nick of time because he slapped me on the back and everything went back down... I never drank another drop of his wine, but accepted his offer to take a glass, each time he offered it until he passed a year later. How I loved that man.
The Carving At each end of the long tables were placed huge turkeys. The head of the households were given the honor of carving these beautifully prepared, golden trophies. It was a ritual and with surgical skills each bird was sliced and distributed to all in attendance until nothing remained but the bare bones.
At the conclusion of this wonderful occasion, the men stood and with glasses raised toasted the blushing ladies as we sang... in our best voice, and in Italian, a song dedicated to our wonderful women, .. "Mamma"
In the end, when I look back, preparing these huge meals, Holiday and otherwise, it is always about LOVE.. Eating the meal together is the real goal, and the preparation is the teasing, and proof of my commitment.. By now, we have done it often enough to have earned that place where it really isn’t necessary any more..
So as I get older and hopefully wiser, I jump quicker to the GOAL, and let my new place in the overview to exist only in our memories, and not in my aching back.. LOL
Enjoy that wonderful place and let your fingers on your checkbook to the walking.. HA! LOVE YOU ALL.. Carlo
Well, I give thanks for all the Chefs and the servers who are willing and able to prepare and host us empty nesters to such a feast on Thanksgiving. We’ll go to church at 9, to the Fox & Hounds to meet our friends at 10:30 and be home by 12 with the rest of the day before us for other endeavors.
I’ll slow down on my food consumption starting at noon today to leave room for the array that is sure to be before me tomorrow.
Oh, yes. The saddest part of tomorrow is NO LEFTOVERS.
Remember we in the restaurant business love when someone asks for a to-go plate, so you will be reminded of our great food at a later date.. LOL
I have a favor to ask.. When you are at church, try to put in a good word for your FRiends, that may not be up to the effort.. Some of us could really need the boost in the right places.. HUGGGGGG Carlo
With Josh and his wife in Ohio I have no one for whom to prepare Thanksgiving dinner, so I'll be joining my niece and her family tomorrow. I'll look through your recipes for a side dish to bring along.
New NEWS: Grandbaby on the way! Due in May.
{{{HUG}}}
I am so happy to hear that you will be with family on this Thanksgiving my dearest FRiend.. I know how hard it is in a house without kids under feet, but we are tough enough to get by.. Drive safe, and ENJOY the family, and good luck to the new Mom, and baby.. Kisses and tight Hugggggs.. Carlo
So good to see you again, and for another Holiday thread, just like old times.. swoon..
That is a funny cartoon, I know funny, and that is FUNNY.. Carlo
What a wonderful story lysie.
It reminds me of the Thanksgiving Dinners and the preparations of my Grandmother H's and then of Mom after my Gram passed away. I remember one year working very hard making stuffed dates. I still love dates.
Hope you have a wonderful day tomorrow.
Love, Aunt M
For sure. I love the recipes!!!
Thank your dear Aunt for me, to be sure that kind of talk will only encourage me to keep writing.. Ha!
Send her to this link to read more of my nonsense..;)
http://cookingwithchefcarlo.com/index.html
You've got it, Carlo. And please do the same for me, whether it be at church, or just when you are alone with your thoughts.
If this is a memory thread (as well as a recipe thread) I have to share why we always have Brussels Sprouts at T’Giving. It is because when my uncle came home after WWII, my mom asked what he’d like for T’Giving dinner. He’d been gone for 5 years, having been stationed at Pearl harbor the day of the bombing.
He said that he’d dreamed of “those little cabbages” all the time he was aboard ship. So, we’ve always had “those little cabbages” at every family holiday meal since — Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, and Easter! They are all gone now. Only my mother remains, and she is 99.
Isn’t that an odd thing to dream of during a war at sea?
My daughter was irritate when her husband asked for Brussels Sprouts and provided a recipe. I told her that she had to cook them in memory of Uncle Bob. She’s happy to accomodate!
The frittata looks wonderful!
Thank you for taking the time to do this thread - I always look forward to it!
God Bless and Happy Thanksgiving!
I love your story, Carlo. Have a wonderful thanksgiving day.
Funny thing about the silly threads, I will never eat Brussels Sprouts, again without thinking of your Uncle.. Bless you all, and a special hug to your Mom..
As bad as I’m feeling this year, I wanted to do this thread, just for old time sake.. As we all get a bit older I am drawn to the past, remembering times long ago, as well as times not so far back..
I have an old ping list, and I know I bother many of you with my prattle, but I don’t do it on purpose, I can’t control myself.. LOL
Many of us remember many on my ping list that are no longer with us, But I remember you all, and I think about all of them at times like these..
GOD BLESS TO EVERYONE, HERE AND NOW, AND THOSE LOOKING FROM BEYOND.. Kiss, and tears.. Carlo
As bad as I’m feeling this year, I wanted to do this thread, just for old time sake.. As we all get a bit older I am drawn to the past, remembering times long ago, as well as times not so far back..
I have an old ping list, and I know I bother many of you with my prattle, but I don’t do it on purpose, I can’t control myself.. LOL
Many of us remember many on my ping list that are no longer with us, But I remember you all, and I think about all of them at times like these..
GOD BLESS TO EVERYONE, HERE AND NOW, AND THOSE LOOKING FROM BEYOND.. Kiss, and tears.. Carlo
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.