TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Hernando Today

No Clue What Was On First Table

ADVERTISEMENT

By JOHN HERBERT, From Where I Sit

Hernando Today

Published: November 25, 2008

We don't know for sure what the Pilgrims laid out on their Thankgiving table back in 1621. All we do know is that 90 friendly Indians showed up unexpectedly to join the feast.
Not that the Indians arrived empty-handed; they contributed five deer they had just nailed by bow and arrow.
We don't even know whether the first Thanksgiving was in Plymouth, Mass., as the English Pilgrims would have it, or 25-30 years earlier, in Florida or Texas as the descendants of the Spanish conquistadors insist.
Wherever it was, the Pilgrims and Spanish both gobbled up wild turkey; there were apparently plenty of birds to go around. Still is.
When the Spanish plundered Central and South America for gold early in the 16th century, they found the local Indians domesticating turkeys as a staple food source.The turkeys were brought to Europe by the Spanish in the 1520s; by 1575 they had migrated north to become a permanent feature of English Christmas dinners.
Besides wild turkeys, the Pilgrims served many other types of fowl--partridges, geese, ducks and even swans. The Pilgrims were warehousing fowl to see them through the winter, anyway, wrote William Bradford, first governor of "Plimoth Plantation."
Freshly-caught fish was also served by the 53 original Pilgrims. According to maritime historian Samuel Eliot Morison, the Europeans had been netting tons of cod off the New England coast at least as far back as the 14th century without ever coming ashore. Except, possibly briefly, on the Isles of Shoals off the Atlantic Coast of New Hampshire.
Cod was a given for the Pilgrims, as were lobsters, clams, oysters, bass and eel. Fried eel can make a lasting impression; it reeks of dirty underwear.
The younger generation of Herberts just had to have oysters, shrimp and crabs; we seniors went for the lobster, although the Keys variety is both smaller and more expensive than the $3.95 a pound we had paid in New Hampshire earlier in the year. (The meat was equally sweet in both, though.)
As we were bordering the Caribbean, black beans and rice were an obvious and tasty side dish for our turkey. Yes; we had to have turkey, too--just a couple of slices, with a spoonfull of a traditional cornmeal stuffing.
After all, what's Thanksgiving without turkey? We could have survived nicely on Keys fare, though, if that's all we wanted. The menu listed three fish, smoked or fried: snapper, mahi mahi and tuna.
We bumped into one Keys native in T-shirt and shorts, with a plastic bag full of fish. He'd been out catching snapper since dawn to fry up for his family's Thanksgiving dinner. Turkey was not an option.
What would any Keys meal be without Key Lime pie for dessert? My wife and I shared a slice, which didn't sit as well as advertised. Key Lime filling has about the same consistency as cheese cake. The graham-cracker crust was too flaky. I'll take pumpkin pie any day, instead.
That's more than the Pilgrims had for dessert at their three-day Thanksgiving feast. If the Pilgrims had anything sweet, it would have been small chunks of pumpkin, boiled and then mixed with honey or maple syrup. The earliest Pilgrims couldn't do pie dough; they seem to have lacked the proper flour.
Neither could they serve what we now consider another Thanksgiving staple: cranberry sauce. No sugar to make the sauce. Cranberries were available, however, whole and bitter. Fortunately, they still are--canned and amply sugared.
A final observation on how the school books depict the holiday feast: I doubt there was any silverware at the Pilgrims' first Thanksgiving. Forks and spoons were still to come. A few knives were shared by all comers. Otherwise, the Pilgrims and their Indian guests ate with their fingers.

A regular columnist for Hernando Today, John Herbert lives in Spring Hill.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT