Happy Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is just another Thursday here in Tasmania... and everywhere else, I guess, except the US. We almost missed it this year. I always thought it was the LAST Thursday in November, but it's actually the FOURTH Thursday in November. This does not usually present a problem except when there are five Thursdays in the month...like this month, for instance. Our Australian calendar certainly doesn't show it as a holiday. Good thing Lin mentioned it in her email or we would have missed a major American celebration. Having just recuperated from my birthday, gearing up to eat another large meal with special treats was probably unwise, but you gotta do what you gotta do. We have a one-day advantage time-wise over the States, so I can report Thanksgiving before you even lift your fork for that first bite of turkey swimming in gravy. We usually go to the supermarket, find a turkey and measure it to make sure it'll fit in our little oven (that always elicits some stares from the locals). We've had problems the last couple years finding turkeys, but we managed to find a large breast and two turkey shanks aka drumsticks to roast up this year. Buying a turkey in Australia requires taking out a small mortgage. They're very expensive, but it's Thanksgiving. What are you going to do?

One of the challenges on the boat includes finding enough space in the fridge to store everything in advance. While we had the marina's van we bought everything we needed and our tiny fridge was crammed to bursting with holiday food. Finding enough pots and pans to cook everything qualifies as a challenge as does finding enough room to prepare everything. And then there's also sitting six people around our saloon table; and most importantly, figuring out the logistics for getting everything cooked and ready for serving simultaneously with a small oven and only two working burners on the propane stove. We always manage. It just takes some forethought.

It was a gray November day which sounds just like Thanksgiving in New England when I was a kid. Kind of raw, but no threat of snow here. There's always an air of expectancy, a childlike thrill on a holiday morning. We had our list going...clean the boat, make the stuffing, don't forget to chill the wine, don't forget to cook the turkey. As we get older, even the more obvious things go on the list.

David made a pumpkin pie and fresh dinner rolls. I was preparing the rest of the menu. We whistled and sang as we worked, bumping into each other and constantly trading places in our little galley. It was a most enjoyable morning. We had the whole day to prepare since some of our guests had to work today and dinner was planned for around 7pm.

We like celebrating Thanksgiving with friends. Everyone enjoys a good celebration and a good meal. Sharing it with non-Americans is a good cultural exchange. We invited Aussie friends Craig (of raptor and reptile fame) and his partner, Jody, as well as our boat-watching friends, Ian and Wendy. Definitely a full table for Nine of Cups. Neither couple knew much about our US Thanksgiving (why would they?), so we gave them the romanticized Pilgrim and Indians spiel. We did not, however, sing the Gobble, Gobble Turkey Thanksgiving song...too much American culture.

The menu included the usual turkey with stuffing and gravy, mashed potatoes, green beans almondine, squash, cranberry sauce. I searched and searched for either fresh or frozen cranberries to make our traditional Cranberry Pudding for dessert, but to no avail. Instead for dessert, we settled on a freshly made pumpkin pie a la David and blueberry crisp a la Marcie with freshly whipped cream. Nobody complained and no one left the table hungry.

We do count our many blessings on this day. To have each other and Cups and to live the life we lead goes beyond the usual “blessings” category. We're blessedly fortunate.

One other thing about Thanksgiving...it signals the start of the Christmas season. That means, Christmas music is allowed on Nine of Cups from now till Christmas Day … yet another thing to be thankful for. The Captain does not agree. Fa la la la, la la la la

Halloween - Celebrate whenever you can

Today is Halloween. We don't really need a reason to celebrate. Any day is as good as another in my book. In addition to every possible holiday, we celebrate arriving, leaving, hanging around...whatever. If we're in the mood to celebrate, we do. That said, the USA probably has the least amount of federal holidays, e.g. days off from work with pay, than any country we've visited. You wonder how some countries get anything done; they celebrate all the time. We celebrate lots in the US; we just don't get time off from work to do it. Halloween is a perfect example. The US celebrates this holiday like no other country we know though its roots run deep in Celtic history. In some countries, they've never heard of this holiday. In South America, they do celebrate Day of the Dead, but it's usually a picnic in a cemetery visiting their long-lost loved ones versus dressing in costume and begging at a neighbor's door for treats. My sister and her earth-centered group celebrate Samhain (sow-en), from the Gaelic “summer's end”, a time of harvest, reflection and preparation for the long winter ahead.

Australia is just getting into the whole Halloween thing. Grocery stores and the local K-Mart made a halfhearted attempt at ghoulish displays. The local Woolworths supermarket (aka Wooly's and nothing to do with the old 5&10¢ stores in the US) is even selling jack-o-lantern pumpkins for AU$2.79/kg. That's about US$1.35/lb at today's exchange rate and would run you quite a bit for the 10 pound pumpkins they had on display. Needless to say, we're passing on pumpkins this year.

I think part of the problem in Australia is this downunder thing. I mean we're in the southern hemisphere and it's springtime, not harvest time. It's a time of renewal here. Trees are all in bud and flowers are blooming. The Celts didn't know about australis incognita. They just knew winter was coming for them. Halloween here is a spring holiday and it loses a bit in the translation. It's all upside down.

I did bring back Hallowe'en napkins from the States. They make good packing material, so they made the final cut. I used them when guests came over for dinner the other night and they chuckled. If only they could have seen how we decorated our house in past years with corn stalks and pumpkins and those tiny orange fairy lights and witches, goblins and cobwebs. We hosted big costume parties. David even added a microphone and speaker to a jack-o-lantern one year so he could scare trick-or-treaters before they even knocked on our door.

While we were in Tonga, several American and Canadian kids went boat to boat in dinghies, all dressed up in makeshift costumes, knocking on hulls, begging for treats. They made out like bandits because everyone was so taken with the idea of celebrating this North American holiday in the middle of a South Pacific anchorage. A holiday and a part of home celebrated that would have otherwise gone unnoticed.

I made chocolate cupcakes and frosted them with orange icing and brought some across the dock to our neighbor's little boy along with my stories of celebrating Hallowe'en in America. I wore my Hallowe'en shirt and definitely felt in a celebratory mood. For the record, yes, I do have a Hallowe'en shirt. I don't have many clothes aboard, but hey, let's be realistic. A girl's gotta have some luxuries and celebrating every possible holiday while wearing the appropriate attire is one of them.

A little trivia for you: cucurbitophobia ... fear of pumpkins

Columbus Day

Columbus Cross

“In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue”...it's a song I learned when I was in second grade. We actually commemorated Columbus Day on 12 October then, not the closest Monday that made a long weekend. We learned that Columbus discovered America. Of course, the indigenous Arawaks already knew it was there. When we were in the Bahamas, we visited the island of San Salvador thought to be the first landing place of Columbus. A white cross and plaque were the only markers noting his momentous arrival. We were surprised when we figured out (it was a DUH moment) that the Panamanian ports of Cristobal and Colon on opposite sides of the Panama Canal were named after Columbus … his name in Spanish.  

x marks the spot

And then there's the Vikings who visited the shores of North America five centuries before Columbus. We stopped at little Manana Island off the coast of Maine where they claim a big “X” marked on a rock was made by the Vikings when they visited. Hmmm...

Granted Columbus didn't have a GPS and most of the world hadn't been charted yet, but to his dying day he was still looking for India. Not wanting to disappoint his royal supporters, he named the islands in the Caribbean the West Indies and called it good.

The good ship Nine of Cups, on the other hand, has taken 13 years to get only half way round the world with several GPSs and beaucoup charts. We haven't made it to India either.