Thursday, or Thereabouts - October 8, 2015

Thanksgiving - the View from  the Kitchen









Thanksgiving Weekend stands on the doorstep bidding me come, enjoy, celebrate, and give thanks for the harvest; urging me to make the feast.





For both the early pioneers and the indigenous tribes, this time of year in North America was one of both deepest gratitude and fervent hope. Come wind, come weather the land had yielded her best and barns were full. But would the bounty be enough to sustain life through a winter of unknowns?









I have not known such a tenuous life, none of my family have. Sure we've had our struggles, our lean times, but we've always been able to gather together at Thanksgiving amid an embarrassment of riches.

I am as humbled as I am grateful for this bounty. I've companioned others whose lives been flipped upside down by a sudden reversal of fortune and I'm now of great enough age to be keenly aware that good living does not grant any immunity from calamity down the road. A winter of unknowns may give warning but never asks permission to visit, let alone stay a while.

My kitchen these days before the feast is cornucopia of aromas, a sometimes frantic place with a spoon-wielding, dish clattering, occasionally foul-mouthed chef at the centre of things pulling it all together. No one ever claimed that celebrating harvest time was easy! But it is fun.

Bacon - there's got to be bacon!

Celery, onions & parsley for sage & chestnut bread stuffing

Wild & Brown Rice with chorizo, hazelnuts, apricots, green onions, parsley & thyme

Mix it all together and stuffing #2 is done!

Today the cup of my life is overflowing with good things. The kitchen is awash in dishes, but I'm pumped. The Family centrepiece of my harvest will gather around the table on Saturday. We will eat well and probably too much. But more importantly we will celebrate love and life with joy and laughter.

I am humbly grateful to be able to cook up a storm in my own kitchen, looking out the windows of my own house to a landscape that is decked out in autumn splendour.
I am blessed. We are blessed.

©2015 April Hoeller