When I was a little girl my mother bought a case of apples this time of year. Usually Macintosh if I remember correctly. They were FRESH, crisp and wonderful, and we stored them in our cold room in the basement.
We loved eating them and I equate fresh crispy apples with fall school days.
My mom would put some in a bowl on the table and my job was to shine them so they looked nice enough for a table center piece. I took great pride in this task, and it was a never ending job every fall. They needed shining because they came to us looking like the apples on the left. Once I shined them up with a clean damp cloth, they looked like the ones on the right – which incidentally, I just shone to go on the table.
By the time I was married, apples came from the store shiny and I puzzled over my childhood memory of shining them. I wondered why my mom would have me shine apples when apparently they were already shiny. (?)
Years later I learned that the apples we buy in the grocery store are waxed to have that shine. I don’t know with what so don’t ask me. There’s no option. They’re all like that.
Now I wash my purchased apples to ‘remove’ the shine . Ironic eh?
But today. Today we brought in our very own beautiful honey crisp apples. They’re in the fridge now, but some inner voice compelled me to shine up a few for the table.
That’s when it happened. My flash back. THIS! Déjà vu. This I have done before. …. Just exactly like this. With a clean cloth. And just like those in my childhood memory, these apples shone up quickly. Almost like magic. And beautifully.
THIS IS WHAT APPLES ARE SUPPOSED TO BE!
Beautiful. Organic. Right outta your own backyard, or outta your community garden, or your nice neighbour’s garden. With a natural matt finish that shines up with the touch of a slightly damp cloth, till you can see the light reflecting in them. Apples in the fall are one of life’s great pleasures.
I don’t know when I started loving fall and Thanksgiving. The colours, the smells, the foods, the geese flying south, the warmth of the sun on still autumn days, the crunch of leaves while walking in the river valley, sitting around the fire on crisp evenings, . . . . . Not sure if I always have loved it, or if it started with autumn memories that included Dan. We started dating in Edmonton during the late summer, and I moved away within weeks to Cold Lake. I was a teenager just starting high school. He came up to see me a time or two and we wrote for a while, but long distance romances when you’re that young are difficult at best.
Two years later I was passing through Edmonton again in the late summer and we reconnected for a short while. A couple of dates and I was back in Cold Lake in September to begin my final year of high school. I had grown up a little, he had grown up a little more. The following weekend, he drove to Cold Lake to visit me and I prepared us a picnic lunch. There are plenty of beautiful places to go for picnics around Cold Lake, and we had a lovely time. This became the beginning of many weekend pilgrimages from Edmonton to Cold Lake, throughout the fall and winter. It wasn’t long before we became engaged. He got an insider look at my family in all our glory: good, bad, and yes, even the occasional ugly. He came to church with me on Sundays and met many of my friends. Conversations lasting many hours helped us get to know each other, and eventually winter turned to spring. He wanted to get married in the spring, but for me, it had to be fall. I needed a little bit of time between high school and the commitment of marriage. And fall had become a significant time in our story anyway. We were married the following October. Thanksgiving weekend. My apologies to everyone who had to give up their Thanksgiving weekend that year to travel to our wedding. That meant you didn’t get your usual traditional Thanksgiving Dinner – which I never considered at the time. Sorry ’bout that.
Thanksgiving includes DINNER to me – one that involves planning and preparation. In the beginning, we were always at one of our parents’ homes on the Thanksgiving weekend. There were some constants between our homes of course: roast turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes with gravy, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie. And there were some variables: brussel sprouts, sweet potatoes, broccoli salad, perogies, cabbage rolls, variations on pies and pumpkin, and my Gramma Harrison’s marshmallow fruit salad – depending on where we were. But it was always with family. That was the critical component.
Thanksgiving however, is more than dinner. It’s memories. It’s harvesting the garden. It’s late summer tomatoes. It’s apples, and apple juice, purple grapes and high bush cranberries. It’s the humidity of the canner, the hum of the dehydrator. It’s crisp outside, warm inside. It’s family. It’s the time of year (not just the day, but all the weeks leading up to it) that the bounty of the season causes one to pause and reflect on those things we’re most grateful for. And more than that, its a good time to vocally express our appreciation to others and to Heavenly Father.
Over Dan and my years together, Thanksgiving evolved from us going to our parents homes, to us hosting our parents and others. That was when the metal of tradition was put to the test. Which of our family’s established traditions would we incorporate into our lives? and which new traditions would we create with and for our children? For those traditionalists like me, we like certain things done the same way, every time. We like revisiting celebrations the same way. For me, Thanksgiving must include turkey with all that means to me. Christmas Eve much include bread and cheese. Easter must include coloured eggs. All the above must include PEOPLE. But in these difficult Covid times that are messing with our usual way of doing things we can still find ways to celebrate and enjoy important ‘traditions’. In fact there has probably never been a time when we were in more need of the cohesiveness of traditions.
apples, apple juice, apple sauce, apple leather, apple crisp, and of course . . . apple pie
I am a gardener, so harvest has particular meaning to me, and a definite connection to our Thanksgiving menu. In addition to the must-have turkey with fixings, dinner must include things I’ve harvested. Things like Cranberry juice from our own high bush cranberry. Made into a sparkling drink. Homemade Cranberry sauce – made from fresh or frozen cranberries, or even better – freeze dried cranberries. Dressing made with homemade bread, onions, garlic and other herbs from the garden. Vegetables of course, from this year’s harvest. Apples: apple pie, apple juice, apple sauce, apples in salad. Pumpkin: maybe pie, maybe tarts, maybe cheese cake, maybe cookies, maybe dip for gingersnap cookies. Grape: pie from our own grapes. Bread – homemade rolls. And of course, FAMILY – the greatest harvest of all. This year, by stupid covid necessity our numbers will be fewer. One son’s family will be with their other grandparents. One son’s family will be with another son’s family. My mother will be with my niece. Our daughter’s and another son’s families will be with us. Friends – another great harvest, will be not be around our table this year. But we will gather as we can, and enjoy the food and companionship of each other.
Don’t ever discount the importance of food in celebrations, traditions and memories. Most of us have very strong food-memories, for good or bad. That is why food is so important in how we celebrate special days, and in how we associate with certain people. A strong (and good) food memory for me is “chicken noodles”; many years of family gatherings and happy times are associated with this family favourite. And it is the natural suffix of Thanksgiving turkey. Ukrainian Cabbage Rolls are another strong food-memory for me. No one could make cabbage rolls like Dan’s step-mom Margaret, and no family dinner that she put on would be complete without them. Its been a loss for many years. University of Massachusetts Professor of Psychology Susan Krauss Whitbourne teaches us that “Food memories involve very basic, nonverbal areas of the brain and can bypass your conscious awareness. This is why you can have strong emotional reactions when you eat a food that arouses deep unconscious memories. . . . The memory goes beyond the food itself to the associations you have to that long ago memory.” For many of us, those food memories are already well established, but our children’s food-memories are still forming, and we have a tremendous influence on their creation and evolution. Wouldn’t it be nice if most of those associations were good ones?
. Ironic eh?
