I don't read the NY Times regularly, but happened to browse through the site this morning, where this excellent op-ed caught my eye. The author looks at Thanksgiving, and its status as an icon of American cuisine, through the eyes (and pen) of Mark Twain. The result is a valuable commentary on the homogenization of American food, in particular the loss of wild foods in our diets, and all that we've lost as regional specialties and cuisines vanish into the cheap 'n easy mist.
Writing in 1879 from Europe, Twain laid out a lengthy catalogue of American foods he missed while travelling:
Twain listed cranberry sauce, “Thanksgiving style” roast turkey and the celery essential to poultry stuffing. But he surrounded these traditional holiday dishes with roast wild turkey, frogs and woodcock...Along with hot biscuits, broiled chicken and stewed tomatoes, Twain wanted turtle soup, possum and canvasback ducks fattened by Chesapeake Bay wild celery. In Twain’s day, New York City markets still sold raccoon, a profusion of wild ducks and bear...His menu celebrated the amazingly varied landscapes of an entire nation. Shad from Connecticut, mussels from San Francisco, brook trout from the Sierras and partridges from Missouri all found their place alongside apple dumplings, Southern-style egg bread, “American toast,” and strawberries, which were “not to be doled out as if they were jewelry, but in a more liberal way.”
Reading this piece, I felt even better about our on-farm, Missouri Thanksgiving menu. Although we're focusing locally, deliberately not using nationally available ingredients, I think the underlying concept is the same. It's a celebration of real, regional food that preserves a sense of place. What we eat tomorrow will be unique to our state and our farm; I suspect that Mark Twain, that most excellent Missourian, would likely approve.
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