Thanksgiving

I started cooking at an early age... and would always make pumpkin soup in advance for the feast next day.



(1975 above)

Pumpkin Soup - Traditional Recipe from the Caribbean

Cut open the pumpkin and remove the seeds.

Cut into chunks and peel the skin off.

Place the chunks into a soup pot and barely cover with water.

Bring to a boil and simmer until the cubes are soft, about an hour.

Either remove the chunks and pulverize them in a blender or a food processor, or just use a potato masher and do it right in the soup pot.

Combine the pumpkin mash and liquid from cooking, add some heavy cream (at least one cup, perhaps two, depending on how much you are making), a tablespoon of sugar, some ground black pepper and a grindings of nutmeg to taste.

Stir together over a low heat until smoothly blended and warm enough to serve.

We would need at least a dozen servings...so just one cup of cream.

 

My Dad wrote a somewhat fictitious tale about our famed parties for the ex-pats on a small island in the Caribbean. Circa 1972...starts at Thanksgiving...and goes on.

One Turkey Too Many

Turkeys were cheap. Less than a buck a pound, which is a real bargain in the Virgin Islands where almost everything we eat has to be shipped down from the mainland.

How could you resist such a bargain? My wife couldn't. She bought a pair which, as it turned out, was one too many.

The idea was that Thanksgiving was next week, and we'd use one then, and save the other for Christmas. Accordingly we crammed the turkeys and a week or so's supply of groceries into the VW Bug, inched our way up the hill out of Charlotte Amalie and finally reached the beginning of our too long, too steep, and unpaved driveway. So with the VW in first gear, and a toe on the brake, we eased down the bumpy dirt road to home.

The first turkey was great. We enjoyed it Thanksgiving and, no thanks to our guests, even had a leftover or two to enjoy later that weekend.

Not so the second turkey. It didn't make it to Christmas. About halfway between Thanksgiving and Christmas we had one of the islands' periodic power outages, and when the electricity came back on it must have come back with a real surge, as it knocked out the freezer, as we discovered several days later when we returned from a trip off-island.

We got back late at night, and the next morning after breakfast my wife went downstairs to the freezer next door to the maid's room to get something out for dinner that night. When the freezer was opened it gave off a smell that would have scared Attila the Hun, and the prime ingredient of that odor was essence of turkey.

Against my will I went down to survey the scene, firmly closed the door on the smell., and set about delegating authority and generally passing the buck. Since it would probably be several days before any of the islands' Mr. Fix-It types could be prevailed upon to come out and look and do some repair work, the authority and the buck went to Doozy, our occasional gardener and sometimes handyman. I could hear him thwacking about with his cutlass at some overgrown hibiscus.

Doozy was one of the island's French families, somewhat like the Cajuns of Louisiana, but with a dialect even harder to understand. Doozy was more of a drinker than a worker. He was an especial vexation to our maid, Miriam, who hailed from Anguilla, as she was a devout member of the Apostolic Church and who very much disapproved of Doozy's weakness for Cane Garden Bay Rum. However, Doozy was a crackerjack gardener and willing to try his hand at most things, so he got the chore of cleaning out the freezer and hauling off the remains of a hundred dollars or so worth of food to one of the overflowing garbage bins that adorn our island paradise.

That he did, too. Except that he forgot one thing. The turkey.

We learned about that from Miriam when we got home that evening. She had learned about it earlier that afternoon, when she returned from a few days off-island herself.

“That Frenchie mon, Doozy, he put an Obeah on me!” Miriam was screaming at us as we returned home that day ourselves and crawled out of the Bug.

What had happened, which we finally discovered after much soothing, was that on her return Miriam had found outside her bedroom door the former Christmas turkey designate, and had put the blame squarely upon Doozy. Evidently as she was arriving, he was departing in his pick 'em up truck – on his way to the garbage bin with his load of expensive spoilage. She suspected him, without any basis in fact as far as we could tell, of lusting for her, and had been loud in her accusations and unneeded refusals. Now seeing a dead fowl on her doorstep, which is just the way to put a hex on a house, if you believe in such things as Obeah, Miriam was convinced that our gardener had put a curse on her.

On the whole house for that matter, to hear her tell it.

Never mind power outages, broken freezers, and the likelihood that Doozy had just wandered off without the dead bird, or perhaps, which was my cynical guess, just left it there to aggravate her. Miriam was certain that she, and we, had all been accursed, and nothing I could do would change her mind.

The next day was not one of Doozy's days to work for us, but I decided I'd try my best to track him down in between odds and ends of doing some work of my own. Late in the morning I finally spotted him seated at one of the bars in Frenchtown, enjoying a beer and chatting with some of his fisherman friends. Getting a cool one for myself, I edged myself into the group and was eventually able to get Doozy off to where I could query him about the turkey at the doorstep.

“Oh, the turkey! I thought something was missing when I got to the dumpster, but I think maybe she bounce out the truck or get caught by a dog. I not leave she at Miss Miriam's door. Not never,” I was assured.

To me that sounded more like it, but I doubted that my assurances would by themselves be enough to convince Miriam. Doozy, however, was not about to help me calm the maid's fears.

“I stay away from that woman. She crazy, thinking I want someone like her instead of a good Frenchwoman,” was his response. And while he assuredly would come and work in the garden when he was supposed to, he would have nothing to do with Miriam. Nothing at all.

I wished I could say the same, for that evening when I got home, things weren't much better with Miriam. There was a lot of slamming things down, feet were clomping heavier than usual, and according to my wife Miriam was threatening to quit and go home to Anguilla. Further talks were, I could see, in order.

What it finally came down to, as decreed by Miriam, was that we had to take defensive steps.

First, we had to keep Doozy away from Miriam, which from what he told us would pose no problem. He would come and work in the garden and around the house, but had to stay away from her and her room.

Second, we would have to put up jumbies to keep away the evil spirits caused by the Obeah. As Miriam explained it, this would mean we would have to put over her door and in the corners of her room, little green doll-like figures which would ward off the evil supposedly unleashed by our would-be Christmas turkey. Sounded like leprechauns to me, and I wondered if just one Danish kitchen doll wouldn't do. I supposed that if all she wanted to do was decorate her room with little green dolls then it was okay with me.

Not in the rest of the house though! Miriam wanted to place them there also, because she said she had to work in the house, and the Obeah would follow her.

At that point I began to contemplate an exorcism. I imagined that with a half-bottle of Bombay Gin I could talk Father Mac into performing the ritual, but he was an Anglican and Miriam was Apostolic, and for her, those two don't mix.

Eventually I had to relent, and bow to the reason of the moment as dictated by my wife. Christmas was coming, and we could tell any unwitting guests that they were just colorful, local Christmas decorations, Santa's elves, or something like that.

So that was that, and it worked out pretty well. Doozy kept his distance from Miriam, albeit with plenty of mutterings about “that crazy woman.” The little green fellows stood guard over the maid's quarters, and the guests who noticed them thought “how quaint,” and said how clever they were, and all went well.

Except for old Walter.

We had a rather large group in for our annual holiday party, and Walter, who is so old he used to be a newsreel cameraman and who drinks too much and smokes foul cigars, but is otherwise okay, insisted on being bartender. My thinking was that this was too near the source for him, but insist he did to the detriment of my liquor locker.

As the evening progressed I had to speak rather harshly to him about the strength of the drinks he was pouring. Even some of my heartiest drinking buddies were complaining they were way too strong!

He did cut down on what he was preparing for others, but kept right on drinking rum straight.

Just when I thought things had settled down, there was a loud shriek and the sound of crystal crashing to the terrazzo floor.

Walter, it seems, had finally noticed the little green jumbie dolls in the corners of the room, and decided they were the proverbial little green men after him, screamed for help or something, and then proceeded to try and jump over the bar! In the process he smashed at least a dozen crystal glasses, the ship's decanter full of Mt. Gay Rum, and several bottles of booze.

Obeah?

Don't be silly.

 

Whatever tradition you observe, it's all about being together so have fun! Forget the damn turkey... I refuse to cook another one.