Canadian Thanksgiving Pregame, with Special Guest Anna!

This is an intro post written by my sister in law Anna explaining her attempt at making an entirely local/home made/chemical-free for Canadian Thanksgiving. Anna and her husband make ALL OF THE THINGS ALL OF THE TIME, so I consider her an expert on these sorts of things. Enjoy! I personally can't wait to here how it went. Maybe if we beg she'll include some recipes.

-----------------

I want to start by thanking Crystal for inviting me into her blog – I feel honored! This is part 1 (hopefully of 2) of my triumphs and challenges trying to cook an all(mostly) locally grown, no-chemicals, Thanksgiving dinner from scratch.

I should mention that I live in Canada – Canadian Thanksgiving falls in mid-October which is a much easier time to cook a local, from scratch feast than the end of November (Silly America!). Our menu is a pretty basic traditional Thanksgiving dinner – Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, green beans, squash, bread, and pie.

I’ve been planning and gathering food for months. Between my own large garden, my CSA share, and the farmers market, a lot of our upcoming thanksgiving meal has been easy. We have in the pantry or freezer and grown with 15 minutes (sometimes 15 yards) of my house: green beans, butternut squash, pumpkin, potatoes, carrots, onions, and garlic. We also made a wild yeast crab apple cider with apples from a friend’s tree. We foraged cranberries from a local (about 30 minutes away) public wild cranberry bog.

About dairy products - There IS an Ontario dairy that we can get milk from (not raw or super local; Milk laws are very strict in Canada). We made some cheese a few months ago we are aging that will be ready for thanksgiving, and we will make a trip to the dairy this week for milk and cream that we can use for some fresh mozzarella, butter, and whipped cream.

The things that I am having trouble with have been; The Turkey! A friend was supposed to raise and harvest one for us, but he fell through. Luckily, another friend of mine gave me a number to a Mennonite farmer she knows, and he had ONE turkey left – a 20 lb one. Well, I suppose we’ll have a lot of leftovers – I pick it up on Monday. Another troubling ingredient – flour. I can easily find Canadian grown Red Fife flour, but I’d really like local flour as it will go into a number of dishes – bread for stuffing, pie crust, and my wild-yeast sourdough bread (for which I have been diligently feeding the starter for months). I have a very tenuous lead on local flour, but I’ll have to get back to you on if it works out.

Some ingredients that as of yet I CANNOT find locally produced – sugar for pies and cranberry sauce, orange juice for my family’s favorite ‘boozy cranberry’ recipe (but I will buy whole US produced oranges and juice them), celery for stuffing, spices, salt.

With one week to go I am feeling good – although this week I have to move, and have a 1 year old to chase around, so we’ll see if I still think this was a good idea a week from now.

Part 2 will hopefully come next week letting you know how this all turned out! And, whether it was worth the months of prep! Anyone have tips or hints for me in my local Thanksgiving challenge?