Thanksgiving is a big deal at our place.  I don’t know if this is because of my husband’s American heritage (we’ve even travelled to the Pilgrim’s Monument in Provincetown, Mass.) or my Mom’s Aboriginal one of celebrating a bountiful harvest.  Perhaps we just like an excuse to gather and eat. 

This weekend 41 people are assembling at the “big” cottage at the lake for dinner.  We call it “big” because it is bigger than the 500 sq feet of ours.  If the weather holds we should be quite comfortable by spilling out onto the back deck and into the screen in porch.  Some years the weather is not in our favour but the day is still sweet and memorable.

This cluster of people does not include everyone in my immediate family.  My definition of “immediate”, are my Mom, my siblings and their families.  One niece is a MRI tech and will have to work this weekend as it is virtually impossible to have 100% attendance.  There are six in my family and all of us still live in Winnipeg and all of nieces and nephews do too.  In fact five families have cottages on the same street at the lake!  We absolutely love being together.  We will have some new “recruits” this year-a boyfriend who has moved from Peterborough and a foreign student from Beijing.  What an amazing blessing.

The menu is pretty standard-turkey, ham and meatballs, plenty of creamed potatoes and yams, veggies, salads, homemade bread and of course vats of gravy, dressing and cranberry sauce. 

I’ve run out of space and time, see tommorrow’s entry for my Pecan Sweet Potao Recipe…

Kath’s quote: “The king and high priest of all the festivals was the autumn Thanksgiving. When the apples were all gathered and the cider was all made, and the yellow pumpkins were rolled in from many a hill in billows of gold, and the corn was husked, and the labors of the season were done, and the warm, late days of Indian Summer came in, dreamy, and calm, and still, with just enough frost to crisp the ground of a morning, but with warm traces of benignant, sunny hours at noon, there came over the community a sort of genial repose of spirit – a sense of something accomplished.”-Harriet Beecher Stowe

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