Depending on the country, climate, and crops grown, harvest festivals are celebrated around the world at different times of the year. It seems that every culture has its own version of a Harvest Festival.
Erntedankfest
In Germany, we celebrate Erntedankfest (Harvest Festival or Thanksgiving) between mid-September and the beginning of October, depending on the local customs of a community. Typically, pageants or parades are held with floats adorned with historical harvest-related motifs, marching local groups wearing traditional costumes typical of the region, and marching music bands. The flowers, field crops, grain, and fruits used for the float decorations are usually real. Local churches will also be decorated in a similar manner displaying the bounty of the harvest.
Thanksgiving
In the United States, the Thanksgiving celebration takes place on the 4th Thursday in November. It is a secular and Federal holiday and has become a highly commercialized event. Our Thanksgiving experience there was completely different and we were in for quite a surprise.
Rather than each town having its own parade, everyone had their
television tuned to the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York. It has the reputation of being the world’s
largest parade. Unlike European Thanksgiving processions or parades, this parade has no harvest-related themes.
Wikipedia describes its origin as follows: “In 1924, store employees marched to Macy's Herald Square, the flagship store on 34th Street, dressed in vibrant costumes. There were floats, professional bands, and live animals borrowed from the Central Park Zoo. At the end of that first parade, Santa Claus was welcomed into Herald Square. At this first parade, Santa was enthroned on the Macy's balcony at the 34th Street store entrance, where he was then crowned "King of the Kiddies". With an audience of over 250,000 people, the parade was such a success that Macy's declared it would become an annual event, despite media reports only barely covering the first parade.”
The parade evolved over the years, with live animals being
replaced by balloons. In turn, the balloons evolved and increased in size. Initially, the balloons were handled between 1 and 30 handlers. In more recent years,
large balloons representing pop-culture characters would require up to 90 handlers.
Thanksgiving Feast
A European Thanksgiving celebration culminates with a church service. Not so with the American Thanksgiving. The big event is a feast where the family comes together to celebrate. With all the different religions and faiths in the U.S., Thanksgiving is the one holiday that is celebrated by EVERYONE.
Thus, the days before and after Thanksgiving, are typically the busiest travel dates of the year, with millions of folks coming home and celebrating together with family and friends over a traditional meal. The feast is loosely based on the pilgrims’ first Thanksgiving celebration in 1621 at Plymouth, Massachusetts.
The "traditional" Thanksgiving meal is comprised of roasted turkey with bread stuffing, baked ham, green beans, mashed potatoes, gravy, sweet potatoes or yams, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, among others. Thanksgiving dinner is the largest eating event in the United States. People eat more on Thanksgiving than on any other day of the year!
I must admit, that in years past, I too have been swept up in the commotion and prepared the traditional family feast. It is a real labor-intensive feat to put together the feast of the turkey and all the trimmings. The most requested item on my menu always comes back to the stuffing I prepare for the turkey. So, I will share that with you today. The dish is versatile enough to not only use it to stuff a turkey, chicken, or other poultry, but you can also serve it as a side dish with a regular meal.
When I prepare it for stuffing a turkey, I usually cook the turkey neck, gizzard, and heart first. This also serves to make a broth to use in the recipe. I place the neck, gizzard and heart in about 3-4 cups water, along with a diced carrot, a diced stalk of celery, a bay leaf. Once the meat is cooked after about 60 minutes, I remove the meat and let it cool. I strain and reserve the broth to use in the stuffing recipe below. Then I remove the neck meat from the bones and chop it up finely along with the meat of the gizzard and heart. This will be added to the stuffing recipe below.
Turkey Stuffing Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 small loaf of white bread (about 1 lb or 500 g), cut into 1⁄2-inch (1.5 cm) pieces (about 10 cups) or an equal amount of croutons, or you can use commercially available bread crumbs
- 1 c unsalted butter
- 8 oz (200 g) pork sausage, crumbled
- 1 c onion, peeled and diced
- 1 c celery stalks, diced
- 3 c turkey broth (see above) or chicken broth
- 1/4 c sage leaves, chopped
- 1 bunch flat-leaf parsley, chopped
- 1/2 t pepper
- Diced turkey neck meat, gizzard, heart (see above; omit if you prepare this for other poultry or a side dish)
- 8 oz (227g) water chestnuts, diced
Directions
- Heat oven to 375°F
- Place bread on a rimmed baking sheet and toast until golden brown, 15 to 20 minutes; transfer to a large bowl.
- Heat butter in a large skillet on medium heat
- Add pork sausage, onions, celery, and cook until tender and the vegetables start to turn golden, 6 to 8 minutes, stirring occasionally
- Add broth and bring to a boil
- Stir in sage and cook for 1 minute
- Remove from heat and stir in parsley
- Transfer mixture to bowl with bread
- Toss to combine
- Stuff the turkey or poultry cavities with the mixture or
- Transfer to a prepared lightly greased baking dish
- Cover with foil and bake 10 minutes
- Remove foil and bake until golden brown, 15 to 20 minutes.
Bon Appetit
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