Thanksgiving

The Pilgrims Ate What For Thanksgiving?
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Ah, yes. It’s that time of year when most families all over the nation come together for the annual gathering known as Thanksgiving. A time of happiness, joy, and reflection on life.
Every year during the month of November, the traditional spread of turkey, mashed potatoes, yams, green bean casserole, rolls- you name it, is on the dining room table. Have you ever wondered what the Pilgrims and the Native Americans ate on that first Thanksgiving in 1621?
The first Thanksgiving was celebrated by the pilgrims and the Wampanoag tribe. The Wampanoag people taught the new settlers to plant crops and grow their own food and saved the pilgrims from starvation. Back to the food.
There’s a good chance that the Wampanoag and the Pilgrims ate turkey. Wild turkey was a common food source. The colony referred to to the hunt as “fowling”. We can be fairly sure they ate turkey. There was plenty of meat as the Pilgrims added five deer to the menu!
Mashed potatoes?
Keep dreaming. Potatoes, at the time, came from the high Andes of South America and weren’t cultivated in North America until the 1700s. So, no, cross mashed potatoes off the list of must haves at the first Thanksgiving.
Corn? Most likely so. But not out of the can or frozen like we have now. The corn the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag ate was, in all probability, was the mushy, turned into a thick porridge kind that was slurped up with a spoon or a couple of fingers!
Pumpkin pie. A staple after gorging on the main feast. Did they have it? Doubtful. Although the Pilgrims liked pumpkin, they were essentially out of luck as you need butter and wheat flour to make a crust. And in 1621, the Pilgrims didn’t have much of either.
Seafood? I know, it sounds crazy. But it’s entirely possible. Food historians speculate that much of the first Thanksgiving meal consisted of seafood! One of the colonists, a man named Edward Winslow, described the setting around his Plymouth home in this manner: “Our bay is full of lobsters all the summer and affordeth variety of other fish; in September we can take a hogshead of eels in a night with small labor, and can dig them out of their beds all the winter. 
We have mussels ... at our doors. Oysters we have none near, but we can have them brought by the Indians when we will.”
So what do you think the Pilgrims ate for Thanksgiving? What about you? What’s going to be on your plate this Thanksgiving? As for me, I’ll have a little bit of everything on the table.
HAPPY THANKSGIVING and enjoy the time spent together with family and friends and of course watching the football games that will be on.
And don’t forget to #QUESTIONEVERYTHING

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