Last night I was trying to remember the complete menu of a Thanksgiving dinner at my grandmother’s house. There are some things that I do remember. We had a large turkey, stuffed with a pretty plain stuffing of bread, celery, onions, etc. We had mashed potatoes and gravy. We had sweet potatoes, sometimes cooked with marshmallows. We had cranberry sauce. When we had thanksgiving at our home instead of grandma’s we usually had two kinds of cranberry sauce: jellied sauce from a can and the regular sauce, made at home. I think that we usually had some kind of bean casserole. And pie, of course there was pie. Pumpkin pie, but other kinds, too. I’m pretty sure that we also had some kind of fancy jello, with fruit and probably a cream topping. There was usually an ambrosia fruit salad with coconut and that sometimes had marshmallows in it, too. And home-made pickles. We usually had both sweet and regular pickles and pickled beats and often pickled crab apples, too. My mom always contributed fresh-baked rolls to any family gathering.

Probably there were lots of variations on the menu and recipes because my dad’s family was a big family. When we got together at Grandma’s we always had an aunt and a couple of uncles and they all had lots of kids. We did, too. One thing I remember is the size of that turkey. I think grandma would go for the biggest one that would fit in her oven.

And what I remember even more than the meals was that supper was always turkey sandwiches on those fresh-baked buns. We’d slather on mayonnaise and put a little lettuce and then put in cranberry sauce and turkey. The memory of those sandwiches is about as delicious as any I have and I have a lot of delicious memories.

When we had Thanksgiving at our own home, in my growing up years, we had fewer varieties of pie. We always had pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving, and pecan pie was a favorite at our house. My dad and I liked mincemeat, but most of the rest of the family wasn’t as keen on that kind of pie.

We didn’t have turkey very often when I was a kid. It was our traditional meal for Thanksgiving and usually for Christmas as well. New Year’s often was celebrated with a ham and occasionally with a really special tender beef roast. I remember lots of chicken in our diet, but turkey was rather rare. I don’t remember any of the neighbors raising turkeys, which is sort of funny, because there were plenty of people who “used to raise turkeys.” I just can’t remember any who currently were raising turkeys. We had chickens, but if my dad sold turkeys, ducks, geese, or other fowl when he sold chicks in the spring, I don’t remember it. We might occasionally have a goose, but it was very rare and I remember that my mom would complain a little about goose meat and my dad would rave about how special it was.

These days we have turkey quite often. Of course we don’t often roast a whole turkey. That is a major undertaking that requires some planning about the leftovers. But we often have sliced turkey from the deli, and sometimes smoked turkey. We will occasionally buy a turkey breast and not cook the entire bird.

It’s a bit hard to say what was on the menu in November of 1621 when the people of the Plymouth colony and Wampanoag Tribal members gathered for what has been called “the first thanksgiving.” Edward Winslow noted in his journal that William Bradford sent four men on a “fowling” mission in preparation for the meal. There certainly were wild turkeys in the region, but “fowling” might also mean ducks, geese, and swans. The record also notes that the Wampanoag people contributed deer. They might have roasted the dear over an open fire on a spit an deer was also a favorite meat for stew. Soups were pretty common in the early colonies.

If they had corn, it wasn’t served as a vegetable, per se. They ground corn into meal and cooked mush from it. Sometimes they would sweeten the mush with molasses. There would have been blueberries, raspberries and cranberries.

They had been eating a lot of fish prior to the meal, and fish might have been an important part of a celebration meal. They dug clams and mussels and oysters and caught lobsters and sea bass in the nearby waters.

There probably weren’t any potatoes. It was quite a few years before those became popular in North America. Spanish settlers might have sampled the Central and South American tubers by the time the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, but potatoes had to be taken to Europe and became popular there before they started to appear on colonial menus.

And pie probably wasn’t on the menu. They had various squashes, but they didn’t really have flour or much lard for making crusts. It is possible that they made a form of a crumb crust like Shoo Fly Pie, but there isn’t any record of such a dish among the Pilgrims. That recipe was developed in the Pennsylvania Colony.

And I have no idea why I decided to devote an entire blog to Thanksgiving menus in the first place. I know why I was thinking about my childhood celebrations. The season is upon us. We’ll be celebrating and eating a bit too much next week. And we will have an abundance of food - certainly enough to share.

Truth be told, however, I’m more in the mood for some good turkey soup than I am for the entire Thanksgiving menu. I’m a big fan of Thanksgiving leftovers. I think stuffing always tastes better on the second day. And there is little that can beat a bowl of turkey soup.

I will be baking buns for the day. You have to have home made buns for the best turkey sandwiches!

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