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My sister, pictured above, raises her own heritage turkeys for Thanksgiving and beyond. She is an avid eat local enthusiast; if not forerunner, she’s been urban farming for ten years. You can read her Meatpaper interview here. I can’t be at her table this year, though I wish I could, Archie 2 is going to be deep fat fried, yum!

I hope that you are all having a local and very thankful thanksgiving. It’s not celebrated in France, but I do have some friends that said they wanted to do a dinner together tomorrow. Today they told me that they don’t have anything to make so I said just roast a chicken or any local bird you can find (a lot of pheasant hunters around here might be up for it), I’ll prepare the rest. From my pantry and freezer. Forget 100 miles; It’s going to be a ten foot thanksgiving for seven people.

In my pantry, I had made pumpkin puree from our after-halloween foraged pumpkins so I’ll make a leaf lard crust pumpkin pie with lots of spice and homemade condensed milk (just milk cooked for a long time with sugar until it, well, condenses into thick sweet cream). While in the walk-in as I call it, our off dining room cum root cellar/ pantry/walk-in fridge, I found two little bottles of Airelles, a tiny French cousin of cranberries. I can add these to our scavenged rose hips and some quinces that I have in the freezer to make a delightful cranberry-ish sauce.

At 7:30pm Benji took Amaya upstairs to read bedtime stories and I got to work boiling the quinces, and cutting up the rosehips and removing their hairy insides (a lot of work). I only have 12 hours, I thought as I cook almost everything on the hearth which takes extra time and planning ahead. I put on the milk to reduce and stirred up the pumpkin puree to recook and adjust the spices for the pie. I’ll make the dough tonight so that I can bake it tomorrow morning.

Stuffing! We have to have that and I just found some wonderful wild sage and I always have left over sourdough bread. I cut the old bread up into cubes and mixed in garlic, thyme and rosemary. I rooted around the freezer and found a carrot and celery (remember those after-market dumpster dives?) to cook into the stuffing. A jar of rock solid chicken broth will defrost tonight and become the flavor for the stuffing tomorrow. Benji and Amaya had a blast cracking the hazelnuts that we had found last month and dried by the fire, they are perfect and crunchy now, ready to add that extra crunch. Which brings me to the apples we picked the day before yesterday, I love apples in my stuffing and I have some dried cranberries for that feistive red sour touch.

Mashed potatoes, and why not add some Jerusalem artichokes to the puree? That will be simple and satisfying. I have butter, cream and salt and pepper to make it rich and creamy. If I had to bring the meat dish, I would make a civet of boar (cooked for 24 hours in red wine).

I don’t mind sharing my larder with my friends; we are feeling pretty fat and happy with a stocked pantry (lots of summer canning and planning ahead for winter) and that is what Thanksgiving is all about: sharing! I have received some pretty nice care packages lately and I want to keep the love flowing, so Sunday, I have invited three friends over to make Tamales from scratch! They will keep what they make, we will laugh and have fun, and in their freezer (if they don’t eat them all but we will make a ton!) will be little presents, perfect to unwrap for Christmas.