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Leighbra your Thanksgiving sounds incredible.

SpendWiselyTexas@gmail.com — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 18:08:14 -0600

My husband son and haven't eaten meat in a while but we decided to buy free range turkeys for both Thanksgiving and Christmas as we'll be having meat eating family members over and our ban on meat has really more to do with the meat industry practices than feeling sympathy for animals (I have a bit of sympathy, my husband doesn't). We also thought it would be a way to support a local farm. Having said all that, please blog about your journey to Thanksgiving. I would definitely read it and am thinking about raising turkeys myself for next year's holidays. That journey to the holiday is a great thing to share with your kids.

Spend Wisely Texas - Living Well and Spending Less in Texas

No, it wasn't organic, the

Leighbra — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:39:44 -0600

No, it wasn't organic, the in-laws all think we're eccentric, to put it nicely, with our food views. I'm also pretty sure that if they could buy the turkey in an aluminum can the rest of the meal, they would be jazzed. I make it a point to bring some really excellent organic, healthy food to our gatherings.

They're good people, they just have other things on their radar.

My mother's cooked about a billion turkeys, I'll have to ask her what it was.

I'm always afraid to swear on BlogHer, even when it's within context, because people do so well here keeping themselves in control even when a VERY heated debate is raging. But I can't really think of people knowingly poisoning my children (I'm looking at you, Dupont) without spewing a couple swear words!

You've had me thinking about NEXT YEAR'S Thanksgiving for the last two days! lol

It's okay to use actual 4-letter words

Beth Terry — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:01:35 -0600

Let's hear how you really feel!

Unfortunately, like I wrote in my post, I've only ever hosted Thanksgiving once in my life, cooking the turkey in a plastic bag. And I think we actually left one of the giblet bags in the bird by mistake. This was years ago. So I am no expert on what kinds of plastic finds its way into a turkey. Was it organic? If so, I'm surprised there was plastic in it. Can you ask the farmer?

Beth Terry
www.fakeplasticfish.com
@fakeplasticfish
FaceBook

I'm not writing anything at

Leighbra — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 01:01:11 -0600

I'm not writing anything at the moment because late this summer a hacker got to my blog, and though we got the posts back, it's very very depressing for me to deal with the little things that are left (spend 3 hours tinkering in order to do 30 minutes of writing...).

But I was thinking of creating a blog about our journey to our Thanksgiving table, starting with when we order seeds and pick up baby turkeys in the spring...and having blogger host it, so i don't have all the background work to do lol

Being green is really a side benefit to our garden. My son and I gardened as part of his homeschooling curriculum last year. We planned it out (lazy square foot garden style), built the raised beds together, ordered seeds, figured out crop rotations, built an inexpensive drip system (sadly almost all plastic, but 1/2 of which was reclaimed pieces of irrigation tubing that a local farmer was throwing away), and learned about processing and preserving what we grew. We also learned (unfortunately) about dealing with different bugs and blights organically.

So, we tackled the garden like one big learning experience, with the underlying theme that budgets are just getting smaller and gardening is a great way to reduce your food spending while helping the earth (and ourselves) at the same time.

I am so sorry, I'm dead tired and rambling. I taught a drama class for kids aged 7-11 and we put on our final play tonight, then my in-laws had their Thanksgiving dinner.

A Q for You: I noticed that the turkry carcass tonight had something that looked very similar to the rings around a six-pack of cola in it. Any idea what it is? It was hard for me to tell since the carcass had been stripped. Is it to hold the legs close to the body? (hello, twine?) I've been reading about the biologic affects of plastic chemicals being dumped into the Everglades for almost 2 decades now, when are people gonna wake the **** up?

I'm kind of blown away

Beth Terry — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:59:19 -0600

@Leighbra Wow. Someone on Twitter today called me "Extreme Green" but I don't even grow my own food. Your plans are amazing. Will you be writing about your home grown Thanksgiving dinner?

Beth Terry
www.fakeplasticfish.com
@fakeplasticfish
FaceBook

I'm kind of blown away

Beth Terry — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:59:04 -0600

@Leighbra Wow. Someone on Twitter today called me "Extreme Green" but I don't even grow my own food. Your plans are amazing. Will you be writing about your home grown Thanksgiving dinner?

Beth Terry
www.fakeplasticfish.com
@fakeplasticfish
FaceBook

We're going a slightly

Leighbra — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 03:12:39 -0600

We're going a slightly different route...with much the same end result. Planning a greener Thanksgiving started in March for us.

We're eating a turkey we raised, butchered and dressed ourselves, raised organically and free-ranged in our yard.

Several of our side dishes will be home-grown. Pickles, corn, squash, carrots and the pumpkin for the pie came from our garden.

Next year, the goal of our garden is a totally home-grown Thanksgiving (and Christmas). I know we can do turkey, potatoes, pumpkin, squash or sweet potatoes, green beans, pickles, carrots and radishes, and that just leaves bread products.

We could grow our own wheat, live in an area that produces a ton of wheat so I know conditions are favorable, and I have a grain mill, but I have no idea how much wheat one would plant for several loaves of bread and some pie crusts...we'll see.

Anyway, you know how proud you feel when you cook Thanksgiving dinner for your family? It's like that, but 100 fold when it comes from food you grew yourself, and I encourage everyone to try it, even if you can only provide one thing for the holiday table, like jam for the rolls, or pickles.

I don't get using disposable dishes for holiday dinners, when the hell else am I supposed to use my good dishes?! lol

Ooh! Please write about the turkeys!

Beth Terry — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:29:51 -0600

@ClizBiz Please please write a BlogHer post about the turkeys. With pictures. And everything. There was just so much more that I wanted to include in this post and only so much time. It's probably too long as it is. But while researching, I felt like I had gone down the rabbit hole (is that even the right expression?) and one issue just lead to another and another. I could have kept researching for days and never actually started writing the post. Does that ever happen to you?

@unmotivated yet I totally agree about all the plastic decorations. Espcially at Christmas time. Feh. And don't worry. I only bring my own utensils and napkin with me just in case. And my friends know in advance I'm going to do it. If you invited me to your house, I would be much more polite. I wouldn't even root through your refrigerator without asking first. JK

:-)

Beth Terry
www.fakeplasticfish.com
@fakeplasticfish
FaceBook

Great!!!!!!!!!!!!!

unmotivated yet — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:00:40 -0600

We dont have a Thanksgiving, I belong to a different religion. But your advice is what I have been wanting to say for a long time. It is so sensible and awesome, like so many right things in life are.

I especially love the advice on plastic wishbone. If you actually think of it, all the decorations are plastic, machine made and look alike. There is never any individuality in the things themselves, all we do is put together the things so it would seem more personal.

Yes I would certainly be offended if you brought your own crockery/cutlery to my table but I would really appreciate if you would tell me in advance about your values and then I am the kind of person who would make sure that I had the right stuff for you - all except the resusable plastic straw - that has to be your own!!!!!!!!!!

Hey I am going to follow your posts for more advice like this...........

Bravo!

ClizBiz — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:25:19 -0600

Yes and yes. Thanks for all this great info, Beth.

Also, this Saturday, I'm dragging my beau out to an organic turkey farm about 30 miles from where I live in Denver. Should be interesting and it's awfully nice of the farmer to take the time on his busiest weekend of the year. I'll learn a ton, I'm sure.

And yes, I blame you! :-)

~ClizBiz

BlogHer Contributing Editor, Animal Concerns, Proprietor, ClizBiz

One thing that I think will make a difference

sassymonkey — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 08:04:43 -0600

For us this year is that we remembered to budget for food too. Last year we completely forgot to budget in the cost of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day dinners. (oops!)

Sassymonkey and Sassymonkey Reads.

A Big Thumbs Up!

Bitches on a Budget — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 09:23:43 -0600

There is nothing more difficult than staying on a budget, particularly around the holidays, this is a great framework to start planning with.

Xo Roz

The dreaded "B" word - budget

loriluna — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 18:05:00 -0600

I love to shop for holiday gifts but I never create a budget - thanks for the tips; this year I'm following your lead!

Holidays

TW — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:00:09 -0600

I grew up in a family that didn't do a holiday gathering THING. My parents lived both far away from my mother's family and a long day or overnight drive from my father's family. I only went to Thanksgiving at my grandparents once that I remember. It was just the four of us or five of us when my much older sister still was home. Sometimes my mother would pull in a stray or two. She started having a holiday brunch-usually between Christmas and New Year's for about 100 of our parent's friends and their family when I was in third or fourth grade. (meaning I am far better equipped to cook for 100 than a dozen.)

Then I married into a family who did the close-knit extended family holiday gatherings-Thanksgiving and Passover mostly. Oh my! Culture shock for me and really my first experience of the kids table and more. I grew to love them though.

Then we moved far away and I sort of missed the bustle.

Then we got divorced. I then got a new extended family-a bit of a different thing. We visited the big kids father's parents and family. (The in-laws squared as my son calls them. Yes. My partner's ex-in-laws were part of our holidays.). We gathered with my partner's siblings, her mother and her mother's now husband and her father and her step-mother.

Then we moved far away and I am already pining to do South Carolina holidays. (MIL squared loves me and gives me fudge. Partner's sister has BABIES. Partner's Sister-in-law ROCKS.) So, even though the preparations for making the drive to SC wore me out when we lived in FL and I generally had to put up with awkward family moments, a car ride with bitchy teen girl who ALWAYS had a cold and often antsy grumpy younger kids, then a hotel room that had issues.

Then some vacillating opinions on where to meet and what time. (OH please no not the crab shack. nooooo no no no please no. No olive garden either please. ran through my head every year.)

Err we are going to your dad's house when? 4:30? They won't feed us. Or if they do it won't be but appetizer stuff. Maybe we should drive through on the way.

Then there was the long drive out to the in-laws squared place. MIL squared would feed us until we burst and be super charming. She would chatter for hours about people I didn't know and wouldn't ever meet. Girl child would paint me as a paragon of homemaker virtue. (I never sound more like June Cleaver than when the youngest of the oldest three talks to her grandparents on her father's side about me.) The annual surprise that FIL squared knew my name and grew to like me I think.

The awkward moments spent with the older kid's father. "Yes, you love your kids. They are the best thing that ever happened to you and the light of your life. Yes, I wish they called you more often. " (Thinking the phone works both ways. Thinking witchy thoughts about the fact he is talking about MY babies...the one who scarred my arm and holds my heart hostage and the one who taught me about weird looking boys being more scared of you than you are of them, who reminds me that trying (and failing) to rescue people is not limited to women, who can make my world with a smile. Yes, there is the oldest too that their father talks about-but I didn't get to help raise her. I know more of her each year and love her, but his talk of her doesn't give me as many general witchy thoughts).

But, I miss it. I miss the awkward and the wonderful. I miss being the part of a bigger family.

Retro-Food.com

Been there, done that, not doing it this year

Denise — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:22:41 -0600

I used to complain about living overseas and not having bustling, noisy family holiday celebrations. Little did I know I'd complain just as much about having to make the rounds from one family celebration to another. That bustling around from house to house, state to state, is exhausting!

I'm older now and I think I've gotten my complaining out of the way. It's going to be another mostly quiet holiday without my extended family and I'm ok with that. I think. Maybe.

~Denise BlogHer Community Manager
Flamingo House Happenings