Eating the Plates

I realize that these thanksgiving posts are going to be backwards. And, that kind of annoys me. But, I can't post any other way, or I'll get confused. So, here goes Day Two of our thanksgiving holidays (day one was considered to be "program" day at our house).

Tuesday night, since everyone was finally feeling better, we had our long awaited Pilgrim Feast as a family. Before we headed out of town to see family, we wanted to celebrate our own way. We spent a lot of time reading about the pilgrims and early settlers in America this month. So, after reading the cutest book (I highly recommend it to everyone!), called "Eating the Plates: A Pilgrim Book of Food & Manners", I was inspired to create an original feast the pilgrims might have had, along with all the weird manners that they required.

Kendyll and I set our menu, shopped for the groceries, and then cooked and baked all afternoon. Carlie set the table (and helped when she felt like it with the baking), Kendyll drew and decorated the menu, and Mommy made the pilgrim hats. (However, I failed greatly at the attempt at Mark's male pilgrim hat...so he had to be an Indian instead. :)

After cooking WAY too long (I'm now glad to live in an age where you can have a microwave used in your meal prep!), here is our final dinner, ready to be eaten:

Corn Soup, Indian Pudding, Succotash Stew, Mashed Pumpkin, Cranberry Bread, and Buttermilk Pie.....

Our last job was to post the rules for the dinner, but we ran out of time to write them out. Instead, Kendyll said them on video for us to remember for next year. Here are a few of the random things about pilgrims eating habits you may not have known...

1) They ate their plates. They used flat, stale bread as a dinner plate, and then ate it at the end of the meal when it had become soggy from their food. (We bought fresh baked bread loaves that were circles, which ended up being the absolute highlight of our rather strange meal. :)

2) They required all children to stand throughout the entire meal. They thought it was disrespectful for children to sit in the presence of adults. (This one was quite entertaining...Kendyll was so tired after 5 minutes of standing, and Carlie couldn't reach her plate. So, we eventually all sat down together.)

3) Pilgrims used their fingers to eat most all of their foods. They didn't even own forks, and they used spoons for only their soup. This was interesting when it came to eating mashed pumpkin, succotash stew, and indian pudding....

4) Because of the whole finger-eating thing, the pilgrims all wore gigantic napkins that were tied around their necks and went all the way past their knees. The only rule was that you must wipe your fingers before you dug into the pot for your next serving. (See our attempt at this large napkin idea below....it looks more like a straight-jacket, really. Which isn't a bad idea either! ha ha.)

5) The drink of choice for ALL meals and ALL ages was beer. They started their infants on beer in the first year of life, and all children and adults drank it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Mark thought we should try this one, just to see what our kids would do, although we chose to go with "apple cider", which the pilgrims also liked and called "swizzle". (Mark was totally kidding about getting our kids drunk, by the way!)

6) Most pilgrim families only owned one or two cups. So, the whole family dipped the cup in the barrel of beer and passed it around the table. Everyone took a drink before passing it to the next person (Oh my goodness, my kids LOVED this rule the most I think and I have no idea why!)

It was truly amazing to read so much about the pilgrims---much more than this list---their hard conditions, the amazing ways they found their food and flavored it, as well as how hard each and every member of the family worked. The girls learned SO much from these books and from this meal. It's definitely being added to our "Thanksgiving activities" list of ideas.

And, I'll end the pilgrim feast report with one of my favorite pictures from the evening. This sums up Carlie's experience. She did NOT like this pilgrim meal much at all. She ended up eating a few pieces of steak (from the succotash stew) and her bread plate. Needless to say, she ate a GREAT breakfast the next morning. :)

It was a fun night for these four pilgrims and one Indian (who Kendyll affectionately called Squanto Daddy.)