So no turkey this year..Nope not going to do it.
Hopefully the turkey I would have bought is still running around this year . I would like to keep that happy thought in my mind.

My  late father would always make a roast duck.I never ate duck.He was an electrician and one of his clients was the BROME LAKE DUCK COMPANY in Quebec.As a child he would bring me there but I would stay in his Pinto (some people never give up Fords no matter what :)).He had brought me into one of the barns once and had explained to me how they killed them.That was enough for me never to even go near a 5 star duck a l’orange in my lifetime.

When you buy poultry in the grocery store they are nameless and you never really think about it until this year. I really started thinking.

It started with Sarah Palin doing that 12 minute interview on national television and behind her there was a man slaughtering turkeys one  by one while she rambled on.Then I read how the turkeys that President Bush pardons are shipped in a luxury van to Washington D.C and then housed in a luxury suite at a hotel across from the White House.Two of them are pardoned and the rest are shipped to the  abbatoire where they are processed for Subway.This year Subway has even advertised the fact that their turkey meat comes from the same company that ships the pardoned turkeys.
The pardoned turkeys are then  flown first class to Disneyland where they live out their existence in Frontier Town.None of the former pardoned turkeys are still alive having been so fattened up and not being able to lose weight or go on a show like THE BIGGEST LOSER ,they die from heart disease just like us.

So I’m getting old and really thinking about things these days.So  I decided to have free range chicken instead.Free range chickens are happy chickens (maybe not so happy dead) and if I’m going to eat meat Id rather eat something that lived a semi happy life.And no free range does not mean that they have more room to run before someone shot them hahaha.Free range is a method of farming husbandry where the animals are allowed to roam freely instead of being contained in any manner.
NO tofu turkey either .If you  gave up turkey let it go. It  isn’t going to taste like turkey no matter what PETA says

I am also doing sweet potatoes though but no marshmallows on top.Last night on Top Chef they said if you did not burn the marshmallows it wasn’t traditional holiday sweet potatoes
I believe anyone who combines marshmallows and sweet potatoes/yams is fit only for flogging as I read somewhere..

Of course I am 57 now and getting a tad senile.

But like I said I really like to think my turkey is playing cards right now ,gearing up for a poker game with Ben Affleck in Vegas

And that is how senile my menopause is making me..:)

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

   Thanksgiving has come and gone in Canada.It is always the first Monday in October.Americans cannot seem to get over this and always ask me why Canadians do not celebrate it the same time as they do.In Canada it has always been on that particular day as the harvest came sooner than south of the border so they celebrated it then.Somehow it always made sense to me,but every American Thanksgiving my mother who was born in the US let my sister and I stay home from school and we sat there and watched the Macy’s Day Parade and for lunch she made us leftover  boiled ham sandwiches and milk with Nestles Quick.My father a stickler for Canadian tradition closed his eyes as he ate soup and bread with ketchup on it while we feasted on Swanson turkey TV dinners for supper.Every time a TV dinnerwhich was rarely served my mother would tell us how they became to be.

Gerald Thomas, a C.A. Swanson & Sons executive, had a big problem. What to do with about 270 tons of left over Thanksgiving turkey.
“After Thanksgiving, Swanson had ten refrigerated railroad cars — each containing 520,000 pounds of unsold turkeys — going back and forth across the country in refrigerated railroad box cars, because there was not enough storage in warehouses. We were challenged to come up with a way to get rid of the turkeys,” said Thomas.
He got the breakthrough idea from the trays used for airline food service. And the TV dinner was born. The first production order was for 5,000 dinners, thought to be a big gamble at the time. They had about two dozen women armed with ice cream scoops filling the new trays at night.
The first TV dinner featured turkey, corn bread dressing and gravy, buttered peas and sweet potatoes. It cost 98 cents and came in a box resembling a TV.My grandmother shook her head every time she heard we were fed one of these things that she said was going to stunt our growth.:)
My grandmother one week before Canadian Thanksgiving had gone to  McLaughlin’s grocery store and bought the biggest frozen turkey known to man.She would bring it home and put it on her cutting log outside and stand there in her rubber galoshes (never done up) plastic rain kerchief on her head and whack that sucker in half.Half would be served for Thanksgiving and the other half stored away in the freezer for Christmas.Seeing that she made about 365 different recipes from leftover Turkey,I never knew why she just never cooked the whole darn thing.She kept professing it didn’t all fit in the wood stove,which looking in it one day and seeing everything stacked baking I understood..:)
Christmas Eve we  would all go to church and sing carol after carol in the highest decibels known to man (well my grandmother did).We had decorated each pew with pine tree branches  trimmed with large ,floppy  (over ironed) red ribbons the night before and the wonderful smell would bring tears to your eyes.For two months of  previous Friday nights we strung popcorn and that was all the around the Christmas tree by the organ and my grandmother had insisted nothing but blue lights should be used on the tree to give the perfect glow to the nativity scene under the tree.

After the service we would help my grandmother and her altar guild team  get the linens ready for the morning service.She would go into the church hall kitchen and make everyone a warm mug  of hot chocolate with one large marshmallow floating on top.I never understood why she rationed marshmallows in her cocoa and will never ever ration them for myself. She told me that is how it was done on the Kraft TV commercials and I would never argue with the Holy Grail of food commercials.I mean you have to admire the Kraft food economists in the 60’s that had rivers of melted cheese flowing  over toast with a large bright red tomatoe slice thrown on top as a garnish. You just have to love that..:)

Christmas morning we would pile in the cold car and off to Grammys once again we would go.Of course she had been up since the crack of dawn cooking that half turkey.Her secret recipe stuffing would be in it and she would giggle and say she would never tell anyone her secret..:)We all knew she added mashed potatoes to it but anyone telling her that would bring her to tears like not being able to watch The Queens Message on TV at 10 am. Did I also tell you she had been phoning since about 7 am to make sure we were all over on time  so as not to miss the Queen? She would sit there and watch Queen Elizabeth read her Christmas message wringing her hands and going on and on on how she hoped Princess Margaret wouldn’t give her any more trouble this year :)Then heaven help us all ,the annual Robert Goulet Christmas record would be  put on.And he went on and on and on until the CBC Christmas day programming began.

Before we could eat our Christmas dinner at noon we all had to get a paper bag and heap as many as we could carry  royal blue and gold tinned LIONS CLUB fruitcakes and go give them to some of the neighbours.I tell you those suckers were probably made sometime in the first half of the 1800’s as if you dropped one of them ,shatter into crumbs they would not. These cakes, according to my grandfather were baked exclusively for Lions Clubs, and  were hand finished, free of artificial colourings & additives, and only use the finest  ingredients.  He even added,more importantly they were superb to eat and most of their sales were HAPPY repeat sales.If they were so superb why did he need that glass of sherry to go along with a slice?:)Got to get that piece of concrete down somehow..:)

Cake deliveries done,snow boots off and we would run into the dining room that my grandmother decorated in the Poininsetta mode..The center piece every year was a hand made candle that Mrs Wilson made.She used to make these candles out of paraffin,empty tins and one whole heck of a lot of decoration.People just marveled at them ..:)

Why does something that takes weeks of planning ,hours to cook,only take 30 minutes to eat?I have never quite understood the logic behind that.Her piece de resistance was her handmade mincemeat fruit pie and Christmas pudding she wold bring out after we all felt we could not eat another bite.Every Christmas she would make her mincemeat from scratch and hang the suet on the tree branches for the birds to eat as a treat.Even to this day there is nothing I like more than buying a jar of mincemeat fruit pie  filling and taking a spoon to it.Years later my step mother would bake a pie and put dimes in it and my grandmother was horrified.She was so horrified at the modernizing of one of her traditions I swear it made her gray wig go sideways.

So after a day smelling turkey, cooking turkey, and eating turkey what would she make for supper? Well a huge plate stacked of turkey and dressing sandwiches of course with tall glasses of milk and oh yes more of that mincemeat pie..:)Then of course we would listen to the Prime Minister John Turners  message with my grandmother wringing her hands hoping he wouldn’t marry Princess Margaret as that would just kill Queen Elizabeth and of course Mary Louise Knight,my Grammy..:)

LINDA SECCASPINA
COPYRIGHT 2008
SAVANNAH DEVILLES

Tuesday is Novemeber 11th a day that will forever be important in my life.

In the USA it is called Veterans Day but we in Canada call it Armistice Day or Remembrance Day.We have parades,pomp and circumstance and it is a very special day.

Every town has a ceremony but the official national ceremonies are held at the National War Memorial in Ottawa.They are presided over by the Governor General of Canada, any members of the Canadian Royal Family, the Prime Minister, and other dignitaries, to the observance of the public. Typically, these events begin with the tolling of the Carillon in the Peace Tower, during which serving members of the Canadian Forces arrive at Confederation Square, followed by the Ottawa diplomatic corps, Ministers of the Crown, special guests, the Royal Canadian Legion (RCL), the vice-regal party, and, if present, the royal party. Before the start of the ceremony, four armed sentries and three sentinels – two flag sentinels and one nursing sister – are posted at the foot of the cenotaph.

 The moment of remembrance begins with the bugling of “Last Post” immediately before 11:00 am, at which time the gun salute fires and the bells of the Peace Tower toll the hour. Another gun salute signals the end of the two minutes of silence, and cues the playing of a lament, and then the bugling of “The Rouse.” A flypast of Canadian Air Command craft then occurs at the start of a 21 gun salute, upon the completion of which a choir sings “In Flanders Fields.” The various parties then lay their wreaths at the base of the memorial; one wreath is set by the Silver Cross Mother, the most recent recipient of the Memorial Cross, on behalf of all mothers who lost children in any of Canada’s armed conflicts.

Every year when I lived in Ottawa as an adult I would go up to Confederation Square and still tears over whelm me thinking about it. As a child it was a day when my father and grandfather would dress up in their dress over coats , military berets and their war medals and  proudly march with their fellow war heroes  behind the flag bearer of The Canadian Legion branch number 99 (number since changed) that my grandfather started in Cowansville Quebec.

I would march with the Brownies and then the Girl Guides (Scouts) feet freezing against the frozen ground.We would march to the front lawn of Cowansville High School and listen to speeches by all the religious leaders and then hear the lonely sound of the Last Post being played.Then the mandatory two minutes of silence at 11 am and you could hear a pin drop it was so quiet except for the annual person with a cold hacking his lungs out..:)For weeks previous the Legion members would sell poppy badges (plastic or felt) that everyone wears and still wears.I never see anyone wearing them here and every summer I go home and look at my poppy badge in the china cabinet and every year I forget to bring it back.

In Britain it is mostly the same save for this year they have banned a lot of Legion members from selling poppy badges.There is report after report  in the British Press of shopping centers banning them from selling much like this countries ousting of anything mentioning Christmas.
The  height of it for me was this report from The UK Sun.

A SHOPGIRL working for Christian Dior (store) was ordered to take off her poppy – because it breached a dress code.
Patriotic Billie Graham, 23, who counts three war heroes in her family, had to remove the Remembrance symbol while on duty at a perfume counter.

A manager told her to wear a Dior badge instead and confiscated the poppy, saying: “It’s a sweet gesture but it’s not really uniform policy.”

I along with a great deal of the British Public am outraged.
I say some of these nay sayers should be ordered to learn the poem
IN FLANDERS FIELDS that we had to learn by heart every year.John McRae the authour was from Canada and my grandfather who was fighting in the trenches at the same time knew him.The poem was written upon a scrap of paper upon the back of Colonel Lawrence Cosgrave in the trenches during a lull in the bombings on May 3, 1915, after he witnessed the death of his friend, Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, the day before. The poem was first published on December 8, 1915 in Punch magazine, London

So as to make sure no one else forgets what our men in service have and are still doing for us ,I’m putting the poem below.
Lest we never forget.

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields, the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below…
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields…
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields…
LINDA SECCASPINA
COPYRIGHT 2008
SAVANNAH DEVILLES