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Show HIGH TIME Give Thanks For Prepared Foods By FLORENCE BITTNER Since that autumn day more than 300 years ago when the . Pilgrims who precariously occupied and tilled a tiny portion of our Eastern shore, gathered to give thanks for their harvest, we Americans have annually celebrated the yield from our bounteous land. BUT SINCE only a small percentage of our population now has anything to do with harvests, except to consume them, ft has become, and rightly so, a holiday on which we give thanks for all our blessings. Among the blessings for which I give thanks, as 1 consider con-sider preparing the Thanksgiving Thanks-giving feast, is all the work that has gone before I begin my cooking chores. 1 CAN immediately think of one thing I am thankful about. 1 am glad I don't have to kill and pluck the turkey. There, in its icy sanitary package, it sits pljmp an? beautiful, pinfeathers removed, its insides out and its edible insides tucked in a neat little paper package all . ready to be plopped into boiling water. Having spent some unspeakably uns-peakably awful weeks in my youth earning a little money plucking turkeys and removing remov-ing pinfeathers, I know exactly what it is I'm glad I don't have to do. 1 have also disemboweled my share of fowl, and a fowler job I hope never to have to do again. I love having my turkey prim, packaged and featherless. I'M THANKFUL for corn, off the cob and in a can. I'm grateful for whoever dug the potatoes and sweet potatoes and sent them to me in a plastic bag. Imagine salad greens for Thanksgiving. I had to learn to like salad in my twenties because before that time out of season vegetables were only found on the tables of wealthy folk. I'M appreciative of the foods I have learned to enjoy without ever having been involved in-volved in their cultivation, such as cranberries. I understand under-stand those little berries which make such a perfect accompaniment to turkey, are the very dickens to pick. Thanks to whoever waded into the bogs to pick my berries. Or are there cranberry machines now? Not only are the things we bring home from the store now more nearly ready for the cooking than they used to be, the means we use to cook them are much simpler. Stoking a wood stove for the hours it took to cook i turkey took more work than I now spend preparing the entire meal. I'm thankful 1 have buttons to push instead of a woodbox to fill. I'M ALSO grateful for all the mechanical aids I have in my kitchen. When it comes to help, they are just as efficient as the relatives who used to abound in most homes, and much quieter. I give thanks for my electric mixer, though I'd trade it for Grandma's left hand, if it included a chance to visit with her again. I'm glad I have all the little gadgets in my "heck" drawer. (So called because 1 always have to paw through it calling, "Where the heck is that thing?" STILL, THERE are some things I do just the way my , mother and grandmother did them. Once the dressing is mixed and the turkey is lying with its empty inside, I still stuff the turkey the way they did and use the same three generation recipe. Why quarrel with success? We still bring out the best china and linen and silverware. silver-ware. Our numbers around the festive board have dwindled, but all the more reason to make each year's celebration memorable. We still use the same decorations which may appear scraggly to the uninitiated, but to us they are Thanksgiving. - ... . I'M GRATEFUL on Thanksgiving for family who gather each year. There's nothing like real live aunts and uncles and young people and a few children to stumble, over, while heaped planers, are carried to the dining room. This year, however, my sisters have one more thing to. be thankful for than I have. This year it's my turn to cook . lhe dinner. They're coming to my house. |