Thanksgiving feast turns back the clock

CAMANO ISLAND — For this Thanksgiving dinner, there was no milk, no potatoes and no wheat. Forget about pumpkin pie, mashed potatoes and stuffing.

The menu featured savory turkey pottage, caboches pottage, Wampanoeg Indian Sobaheg and a bright yellow “clown” sauce.

The Thanksgiving dinner the South Camano Grange served this year was not traditional. Modeled after the 1621 feast shared between colonists from the Mayflower and American Indians, the meal was, however, authentic.

Four women with an average age of 70 spent a week in the kitchen cooking with methods and foods popular 400 years ago. They scoured supermarket shelves for Jerusalem artichokes. They ground sunflower seeds into flour and recruited men to slice tough Cinderella squash with hatchets.

“What we think is a traditional Thanksgiving feast is a creation that’s come about over time,” said the Rev. Barbara Allen of Camano Island, who spent months researching the meal.

Through her research, Allen has come to believe that very little of the Thanksgiving most Americans celebrate is rooted in history.

The people who sailed to America on the Mayflower were not pilgrims, she said. They never referred to themselves as pilgrims and not all were fleeing religious persecution. Some were criminals fleeing the law, she said. She calls them colonists.

The feast was not a one-day meal prepared by scores of settlers and Indians. It was a three- or four-day event cooked by four married women.

Allen doesn’t even like the notion that the 1621 feast was the first Thanksgiving. The Wampanoeg Indians routinely gave thanks and shared meals to celebrate good harvests, healthy babies and other blessings.

“There were no stores,” she told the 200 or so people gathered in the grange for Sunday’s meal. “There was no commercialization. No one could listen to an iPod or iPhone. It was a different world. In some ways, it was a more aware one.”

Without the benefits of a grocery store or even a well-stocked spice cupboard, the colonists ate what was around them. The result was food best described by many at the grange dinner as “interesting.”

“The only one I liked was the first dish and the turkey,” said MiKayla Nellis, a Cedarhome Elementary School fifth-grader. “The other ones didn’t taste so well.”

As the Old Time Fiddlers played, Voncile Sturm tasted her first bite of Wampanoeg Indian Sobaheg, a thick squash-based dish with different meats and Jerusalem artichokes.

“Where’s the salt and pepper?” she joked, knowing there was none on her table. “Well you know, if this is what they were used to, I’m sure it’d be good.”

Curious for an authentic taste of Thanksgiving, she came to the dinner with her husband, Frank Sturm, who had an ancestor on the Mayflower. They considered attending an authentic Thanksgiving meal in Ply­mouth, Mass., but ultimately decided it was too far to travel. When they heard about the grange’s meal, they bought tickets immediately.

This is the first time the 1621 meal has been recreated in the Pacific Northwest, according to Allen.

“There’s not a lot of fancy here,” Frank Sturm said, as he prepared to taste “diverse sallets boyled,” a cornmeal-based dish with spinach and hard-boiled egg.

In 1621, there were no forks or knives. So the diners paying $15 each for Sunday’s meal ate with spoons and their hands.

“The colonists mostly ate with stones and with a little dagger,” said Allen, 69. “We did not think it would be wise to bring daggers to the meal. There will be children there.”

As students from the Stanwood High School culinary arts program served dinner, descendants of Plymouth settlers shared their family histories, Allen spoke about the meal and fiddlers played.

Teacher Jennifer Allen attended the meal with 10 of her fifth-graders from Cedarhome Elementary School in Stanwood. She’s been teaching about the Plymouth settlement and said the dinner helped her students understand that Thanksgiving is more than mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie.

“To actually be able to come and experience first-hand what it would have been like to sit at the feast, I think is a more real-world connection for them,” she said. “I hope they keep having it every year.”

Reporter Kaitlin Manry: 425-339-3292 or kmanry@heraldnet.com.

Corn bread and Corn Bread Sippets

From Rev. Barbara Allen’s research

1cup cold water

1cup cornmeal

3cups boiling water

1/2teaspoon salt

Mix cold water with cornmeal. Stir into boiling water and salt. Cook, with patience, stirring constantly, not allowing sticking, until mixture thickens. Pour into greased bread pan or rectangular baking pan. Let or help it settle flat, and place in refrigerator overnight. Next morning, remove from pan and slice about a half-inch thick.

Dip each slice into corn flour and fry in greased pan or greased griddle until brown. Then turn and brown other side. Keep warm until served. This has also become known by its Italian name, polenta, but it is American in origin.

Diverse Sallets Boyled

From “Giving Thanks” cookbook by Kathleen Curtin and Sandra L. Oliver.

Finely chopped cleaned, blanched spinach (or other suitable greens), put into hot serving or cooking pot that’s been lubricated with butter to prevent burning. Add sorrel and/or vinegar. Stir in, taste, then season with cinnamon, ginger, sugar and a few plumped or parboiled currants or raisins. Then cut hard (boiled) eggs into quarters or eighths to garnish the offering, and serve it upon sippets.