Thanksgiving 2011: Heaping platters of gratitude and love

Fall colors
© L Kathryn Grace
All rights reserved

Thanksgiving is always a special time for my sweetheart and me. Earlier this week, we celebrated our twenty-third anniversary. This year, for the first time in many years, we both took time off to spend most of this week together in ways we don't often do anymore: Go for long walks, be tourists in our beautiful city and, perhaps, discover some new, hidden treasure here, make and enjoy a Thanksgiving feast just for us.

Since we love the foods of Thanksgiving but not all the fuss and mess for a single meal that is over in thirty minutes, we decided to spread it out. Yesterday, we stuffed and roasted our "petite" turkey, as the store called it, along with sides of roasted yams, roasted Brussels sprouts, this delicious cranberry-apple stuffing, and fresh pears.

Today, we'll enjoy leftovers, homemade cranberry sauce, more fresh fruit, and twin helpings of mashed yams and uber rich mashed potatoes. Tomorrow, I plan a broccoli-rice casserole that would ordinarily have been another side dish at a big gathering and perhaps the pumpkin pie I have yet to make. Or we might have that on the weekend.

It's a week of smaller scale feasts. Spreading it out like this gives us an opportunity to savor the dishes we love most this time of year and helps us avoid overeating. As much as possible, I've substituted healthier versions of all the things we love so well.

We are fortunate that we have the means to purchase all-organic foods. Even the turkey is organic-pasture-raised, its supplemental diet also organic and vegetarian. I noticed when I cleaned it that it did not smell of poultry poop or blood, as the turkeys we used to get, almost always turning my stomach as I washed and prepared them.

Giving gratitude

On this day especially, I give thanks for the turkey and for the family and farm hands who took so much care in raising and processing it.

I give thanks for the farm workers, mostly here in California, but also in Mexico and lands far away who raise, harvest and process the fruits and vegetables we eat every day.

I give gratitude for the activists around the world who have worked for decades to raise awareness of the need for fair labor practices, organic agricultural practices, and certifications for both so that we, the consumer, can trust that we are getting what we pay for when we buy Fair Trade Certified and Certified Organic foods and products.

I give gratitude for this woman who has shared so much of life with me; for my family who, though they may not always understand me, love me from the bottom of their hearts anyway; for good health, which I have learned never to take for granted; for the richness of peace I enjoy; for each individual any where on this planet who works for peace, who stops and takes a breath and finds a way to make peace in a moment of conflict; and for you, my faithful readers, for encouraging me, for sometimes prodding me to open my mind a little differently, and for showing me so much of your world in your own blogs and publications.

May you all be blessed beyond measure this day.

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We make peace in a million small ways every day.

All text and images, unless otherwise noted, copyright L. Kathryn Grace. All rights reserved.

I give thanks

© Poppy Fogler

[Post updated 6:45 p.m. 11/25/10]

Today didn't turn out as planned. After shopping, baking and cooking with joyful anticipation all week, one of us got sick. Too sick to drive. We were unable to make the sixty mile trek to our daughter's home for Thanksgiving. There is a lot more to it, but this was just one of a series of events that soured the day for three of the five families expecting to feast, laugh and play together. Like the card says, I really wanted to play with them today.

Stuff happens. We'll get over it. Here at home, we ate chicken soup from the homemade stock I made earlier in the week for today's gravy, and we'll eat ice cream for dessert later. But I'm sad tonight, because I let my daughter and her family down, and because my other daughter and her family spent much of the day in the emergency room after her father-in-law pulled cartilage from his ribs in a fall. They missed the fun too.

Still, there is much for which I am grateful. So I'm adding to this post, written days ago and published earlier. The truth is, crap happens, and sometimes it happens on the holidays. We didn't have anything like an Ordinary day, but building a world like the Village happens more in these moments, perhaps, than in the easy ones. Gratitude remains. I continue to give thanks

• For unknown blessings already on the way
• For the relative good health of my family and loved ones
• For each and every one of you my readers
• For every reader comment that encourages me to keep working, keep speaking out, keep finding ways to live more consciously
• For every reader comment that challenges my views and shows me one more way to perceive any given thing
• For the bounty of love in my life
• For blue skies, sunshine and gardens full of flowers, trees, fruits and vegetables
• For rain, wind and cold and the good they bring in new growth, soil transfer, fresh air, and unlocked seeds
• For laughter and the ability to laugh in the face of peril
• For the bounty of food my family enjoyed today, wherever we sat down to table
• For the extended family with whom I have the joy of sharing the bounty, if not today, on many other occasions
• and for people like Representative Inglis, who went on record with this.

Representative Inglis (R) attacks GOP on climate change

I'd call it more gentle persuasion than an attack, but I'm grateful nonetheless. I take hope, knowing that one person on the other side of the aisle knows the truth and is willing to talk about it. Sure, he can talk about it now because he's a lame duck and hasn't anything to lose any more. Maybe in speaking what so many others on his side of the aisle surely know, despite their posturing, he will somehow get through their numb skulls and others won't wait until they're on the way out to go on the record.

I give thanks for Representative Inglis, for you, for my family and loved one, for the richness of my life, for whatever slim bits of grace I manage in adversity, and for forgiveness when I don't manage to find enough.

What are you grateful for today?

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We make peace in a million small ways every day.

All text and images, unless otherwise noted, copyright L. Kathryn Grace. All rights reserved.

Thanksgiving turkeys: Big Food is targeting us

Image credit: Ladyheart

As we get closer and closer to the biggest food fest of the year, when our tables nearly buckle under the weight of the most delicious foods we can conjure in our kitchens and purchase from our local delis and bakeries, Big Food is preparing to wow us with processed foods to snag our dollars all year long.

Take a look at what they're cooking up for us in Top 10 Food Trends for 2011. Hint: Processed is out, "proven" is in, and they're planning to "sell the technology."

Sometimes I feel a bit like a turkey m'self.

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We make peace in a million small ways every day.

All text and images, unless otherwise noted, copyright L. Kathryn Grace. All rights reserved.

Giving thanks

Image: © L. Kathryn Grace

If I had to count only one blessing today, it would be the delight I feel when I walk past a neighborhood school where the children are learning to grow their own vegetables, with a few posies in the mix. I give thanks for every gardener who takes time to teach little ones to dig their hands deep into the soil, feel it cool and moist, sniff and yes, even taste.

There is no greater gift my parents could have given than tending their gardens. We might eat lean the rest of the year, but the summer months brought steaming platters of corn on the cob, plates of of fresh-picked green beans cooked crunchy tender so not to lose the flavor, bowls filled to the brim with crisp cucumbers sliced with onions and steeped in vinegar with dill and plenty of salt and pepper, and all the juicy red tomatoes we could eat. Generous bouquets from my mother's flower gardens filled the house with sweet and pungent scents. Hay fever sufferers beware!

My mother, in her eighties, still manages to plant, hoe and weed her gardens throughout the summer. Where the irrigation lines don't reach, she hand carries buckets of water to treasures she brought from the old home place decades ago.

This time of year, when the ground is resting, waiting for the winter freeze, Mom yearns to plunge her hands once again into the loamy earth--loamy because of the tons of compost she's dug into the hard clay over the years. When I think of Mom, almost always I see her on the ground, one hand propping her up, the other patting the soil round a transplant. "There you go, you little thing," she says to it. "I've done my part. Now it's up to you to grow." And they do. Amazingly fast and luscious.

Grattan School Children's Garden
Image: © L. Kathryn Grace

So on this day, I give gratitude to my mother and father who taught me, by example, to love the earth and to respect its bounty. I give gratitude, too, to the teachers and parents who are showing the children at a neighborhood school how to grow vegetables and flowers and, equally important, to be kind to one another.

What are you thankful for?

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We make peace in a million small ways every day.

All text and images, unless otherwise noted, copyright L. Kathryn Grace. All rights reserved.