According to my Encyclopaedia Britannica the Pilgrims inaugurated Thanksgiving not only to thank God for their bountiful harvest, but to celebrate their victories over the Indians. I always thought they'd shared that first dinner with the Indians, in fact I had a lovely mental picture of painted warriors sitting side by side with gray-garbed Puritans around the groaning board, rather like lions lying down with lambs.
Making fun of Native Americans nowadays is as politically incorrect as wearing a leopard fur coat or smoking a good cigar at the end of Thanksgiving dinner. But back in the days when half the nation listened and laughed at Amos and Andy every Sunday night, and the boss thought nothing of giving his secretary a friendly pat on the fanny as she left the office, Native Americans were still Indians.
My husband's family served something they called Indian pudding every Thanksgiving. At my first Taylor Thanksgiving I was told that although it got harder each year to shoot an Indian in Fairfield county, that was the main ingredient of this unappetizing-looking dessert. I knew the Taylor men were avid hunters and always went gunning every Thanksgiving morning, but even though I was a naive young bride I wasn't so gullible as to believe this outrageous tale. After all, Hank's dad was always bragging about all the Mohegan blood in his veins.
About ten years ago, however, I learned that not only Hank and his sister, but my own children actually swallowed the story as well as the pudding in their childhoods. I suppose if I'd been young enough to sit on Hank's father's knee as he described the excitement of the hunt, I might have too.
The first year we lived on Locust Hill all the relatives invited themselves up for a nice old-fashioned Thanksgiving dinner. Granddad said he'd shoot an Indian (might get a young tender one up here) and Mosie said she'd make the pudding, a disgustingly soggy concoction, whatever its ingredients. I decided I would make a pumpkin pie.
That fall I'd been given a huge Hubbard squash. I'd cooked this 10 pound monster and ended up freezing more than a dozen bags of mashed squash, so it seemed silly to go out and buy cans of pumpkin. After all, we were supposed to be having an old-fashioned Thanksgiving. I made two Hubbard squash pies. Everyone thought they were so much better than pumpkin that we used all the frozen squash in pies that winter.
I always have plenty of bittersweet growing in the hedgerows for Thanksgiving decorations, and sometimes grow Indian corn and gourds as well. I never tried growing Hubbards myself as they take up a lot of space in the garden, and aren't any better home-grown than those bought at a roadside stand.
Gourds are members of the Cucurbit family, along with their more edible cousins, cukes, melons, pumpkins and the squashes. The insects that pollinate them think nothing of going from a squash to a cuke to a pumpkin, so none of the Cucurbits breed true a second year. Planting their seeds, however, can produces some marvelously strange and interesting hybrids.
Have a happy Thanksgiving, and if you're tired of pumpkin pie, try substituting squash. Indian Pudding? My copy of The Joy of Cooking has a recipe for Indian pudding, but if you have a newer addition you might have to look it up under Native American pudding.
