American Thanksgiving

This post has been sitting in draft mode for a whole week, so I thought I'd better finish it and release the hounds, as it were!!

David's Thanksgiving ornament
from when he was 6
Originally uploaded by gailontheweb.

in case you ever lose your papoose...
Originally uploaded by gailontheweb.

I've been in the U.S. during American Thanksgiving before, but never to celebrate.

1991 - Los Angeles to Sydney, Australia. I flew late in the evening, after a dinner with my L.A. friends. I was on a United flight with a planeful of Hasidic Jews on their way to a conference in Melbourne. I remember the flight attendants giving us chocolate turkeys and the pilot wishing us a Happy Thanksgiving.

2000 - upstate New York, with my relatives. I will never, ever forget this trip. I got dragged -- er, driven -- by my cousin to an outlet mall near West Point, and it took us more than two hours to get out of the mall parking lot. They had to call in the state troopers to direct traffic and prevent road rage. I've never been stuck in traffic like that before, or since!

Since Canadian Thanksgiving is in October, there's a certain amount of deja-vu when American Thanksgiving rolls around, but I have to vouch for David's cooking skills: I've never had turkey this good before! I was so impressed! He pitched me this recipe for maple brine turkey -- which sounds rather vile, actually, but the bird marinates in the concoction and keeps moist. Turkey is one of those foods that I could never get excited over, but the proof is in the pudding, so to speak, and in this case, it tasted more like a giant roast chicken! Fancy that!

OK, about this teepee in the photo -- David says he has one ornament per occasion. He's Jewish, so doesn't celebrate Christmas, and he's got this very mod "Star Trekkie" ELECTRIC menorah that he calls his "Funky Cold Menorah" -- harhar... (it really is so much more amusing when he says it; photo forthcoming!)

For Thanksgiving, David brings out this teepee, complete with papoose, which I thought was hilarious when I turned it over and saw his name. "I was 6 years old!" he says. (Wow, that papoose is looking pretty good for being nearly the same age as me!) But why would you write your name on it? In case it got mixed up with all the other papooses at Show and Tell?