Thinking about Thanksgiving

Yesterday was everything I look for in a holiday dedicated to gratitude and good food. Dinner went off without a hitch and I think I turned out the best turkey I've ever roasted in my life. Few things give me the satisfaction of preparing a meal for the people I care about. That satisfaction gets the gratitude train moving in me and it's easy to reflect on just how good I have it when I'm elbow deep in a raw turkey. I have the life I imagined for myself when I was a teenager and I marvel at that all the time, on Thanksgiving particularly.

While it's true I wouldn't have chosen the path I took to get here had I known what was involved, what's important is that I made it. Back then, my big picture imaginings for what my future held were that I'd be in a position to call my own shots and that I'd be surrounded by people who love me. I have both in spades and I'm a fortunate, grateful man for it.

Yesterday we were joined at dinner by someone I'd never met. Dzenan is a neurosurgical resident at the big teaching hospital in Tampa and he's a colleague of my friend JD. Dzenan is a recent transplant here and doesn't know many people locally. JD had told me earlier that he was from Sarajevo originally and that he was a good guy.

I swear, when I hear an accent I know that there's a story lurking in there somewhere. The wars that tore apart the countries in what used to be Yugoslavia were a horror show that barely warranted a mention in the US. So whenever I meet someone from that part of the world I always find a way to steer the conversation back to the place they used to call home.

The Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina declared its independence from Yugoslavia in March of 1992. By early April of that year, both the European Community and the United States recognized the independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Within days of that recognition the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) and the Army of the Serbian Republic began a military attack of Sarajevo. The Bosnians were overwhelmed and waited for a UN intervention that never came.

Photo by Mikhail Evstafiev

From 1992 to 1996 the JNA and the Serbs blockaded the city of Sarajevo and unleashed upon it the most sustained and violent siege of a capital city in the history of modern warfare. The blockade was nearly complete and it's estimated that 10,000 people were killed and 56,000 were wounded during the conflict. According to UNICEF,

Of the estimated 65,000 to 80,000 children in the city: at least 40 percent had been directly shot at by snipers; 51 percent had seen someone killed; 39 percent had seen one or more family members killed; 19 percent had witnessed a massacre; 48 percent had their home occupied by someone else; 73 percent have had their home attacked or shelled; and 89 percent had lived in underground shelters. It is probable that the psychological trauma suffered during the siege will bear heavily on the lives of these children in the years to come.

The siege has also had a profound effect on the psyche and future of the city's population. The Bosnian Government has reported a soaring suicide rate by Sarajevans, a near doubling of abortions and a 50 percent drop in births since the siege began.

Dzenan was 19-year-old when the blockade of his home town started. He lived through the deprivation, the sniper fire, the bombs and the shelling. He was a medic in the Bosnian resistance and at 19 found himself running across a tarmac with two friends. Had they been born anywhere else in Europe they'd have been doing what 19-year-olds do anywhere. But because they were 19-year-olds in a blockaded Sarajevo, they were running across a tarmac and dodging sniper fire. Dzenan was the only one who made it to the other side of the tarmac.

This is not ancient history, but something that played out in the lives of people who can tell the story today. What I found so amazing about Dzenan's telling was that he related his experiences without a hint of self-pity or attention-seeking. He's happy to be where he is and he's fully engaged in chasing down the neurosurgical visions he has for his own life.

His story gave me plenty of things to think about. If my 19-year-old vision for my life was that some day I'd be in charge and that I'd be surrounded by people who love me, what does a 19-year-old who loses his friends to sniper fire look forward to? Compared to living through armed conflict, my trials and tribulations are trivial at best.

So thanks Mr. Sarajevo, you brought the very essence of Thanksgiving to my Thanksgiving and all you had to do was show up.

An Itch to Bake from Scratch: Butternut Chai Cheesecake

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! This is David Nolan, here to express gratitude and give thanks to Paul for inspiring me this year to contribute to Kitchen and Residential Design. I haven't had the opportunity to write much, but I am a daily reader who is constantly surprised by the wit and variety of the content found here. Thanks a lot Paul - you ceaselessly provide me with entertainment and enlightenment.

The latest inspiration I received came from the post about scratch baking. In my childhood home, my mom baked many things - bread, cakes, and especially pies. She would not want me to tell the secret to her pie crusts (lard) but they were always the best. Everyone in my family still begs her to make pies when they come to visit, whether it is the holidays or not. My mom begrudgingly fulfills the requests, and everyone swoons at the end result of her hard work.

Unfortunately, the genes for baking were not inherited by me. Baking is a leap of faith that a control freak like myself just cannot bear. You mix up a bunch of ingredients into a runny gooey mess, then plop it in a pan, and pray the oven gods yield a delicious harvest. I am a cook - I taste as I go, adding layers of flavor as the food progresses, all under my constant supervision. Baking requires letting go of the control and trusting the recipe; baking also requires that you adhere to the recipe. The idea that what goes in the oven tastes and looks nothing like what comes out scares me, and the fear of following directions and letting go of control keeps me from baking.

Cheesecakes are the one thing I do bake and I bake them a couple times a year. I still cannot follow the directions though and this Thanksgiving was no exception. I set out to make a Pumpkin Cheesecake from a tried and true recipe but ended up with a Butternut Squash Chai Cheesecake. I fretted about the flavor due to the untested butternut squash and an overpowering cardamon perfume. Last night I brought the final product to a wonderful potluck dinner with some of my friends and the cheesecake was consumed with gusto and compliments.

Here is the recipe. Please let me know if you try it, and especially if you give it your own personal twist.

Butternut Chai Cheesecake
enough for a 10" spring form pan plus a little extra for a tester

Crust:
1 package graham crackers (1/2 box)

15 ginger snaps

1/4 cup brown sugar

1 stick of butter

Finely crush crackers and snaps, a food processor works well. Mix in sugar and add to spring form pan. Melt butter and drizzle in pan while stirring. Press the crust into the bottom of the pan, coming up the sides about a 1/4". Refrigerate crust for 1 hour.

Filling:

4 packages cream cheese, room temp

1 cup dark brown sugar

1 15oz can butternut squash puree (pumpkin works also)

4 eggs, room temp

2 T sour cream

1 T cornstarch

2 t vanilla extract

1 1/2 t cinnamon

1 t ginger (extra fine grated fresh or 1/2 t powder)

1 t allspice

1/2 t each powdered cardamon, nutmeg and cloves

1/4 t each cayenne, black pepper, salt and coriander

Mix cream cheese and sugar, then mix in butternut squash. Add 1 egg at a time, constantly mixing. Add sour cream, cornstarch, vanilla and spices one at a time. After crust has cooled, pour in cheesecake filling. Place spring form pan in a hot water bath for a creamier no-crack cheesecake. Place carefully in preheated 350 degree oven. Bake for 50 min and do not open oven.

Sour Cream Topping

Mix 16oz sour cream with 3 T brown sugar

Remove cheesecake from oven. Spread topping over cheesecake gently. Place back in oven for 10 min. Turn off oven and open the door a crack. Let the cheesecake rest in oven for 1 hour. Remove from oven and allow to cool completely. Refrigerate overnight.

garnished with plumeria, abutilon and Eucharist lily flowers

The REAL first North American Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow US-ians. As for the rest of you, get back to work.

In light of today's US holiday, I'm going to repeat an article that gets thrown around in my part of the country every year at around this time. Contrary to the popular US imagination, North America was a Spanish colony before it was an English one and the capital of that Spanish colony was right here in good old Florida. For some reason I can only attribute to a 400-year-old grudge England had against Spain, the American myth completely ignores that the Spanish were the first Europeans to set up a permanent base in what would some day become the United States. Maybe I should bid everybody a Feliz Día de Gracias instead of a happy Thanksgiving.

Juan Ponce de León y Figueroa arrived in Florida on 2 April, 1513.

Pedro Menéndez de Avilés was the governor of la Florida when the first Thanksgiving was held in 1565.

True or False: The Pilgrims celebrated America’s first Thanksgiving, a harvest festival in Plymouth, Massac- husetts, in 1621.

You may have answered “True,” based on what you learned in elementary school. But, according to current historical research, the answer is “False.” The REAL first thanksgiving celebration actually took place 56 years earlier, in St. Augustine, Florida (50 miles south of present-day Jacksonville).

On Sept. 8, 1565, Spanish Admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés landed in St. Augustine with 500 soldiers, 200 sailors, and 100 civilian farmers and craftsmen, some with wives and children. After claiming La Florida on behalf of his monarch Philip II, Menendez and his entourage celebrated a Mass of Thanksgiving for the expedition’s safe arrival and then shared a meal with the native Indians.

These stand as the first documented Thanksgiving events in a permanent settlement anywhere in North America north of Mexico, says Michael Gannon, an eminent Florida historian who holds the title of Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Florida.

Gannon’s research indicates that the real first Thanksgiving meal probably consisted of “cocido,” a stew of garbanzo beans, salted pork, and garlic, accompanied by hard sea biscuits and red wine. If the native Indians contributed food to the meal, they might have brought protein sources such as deer, gopher tortoise, shark, drum, mullet, and sea catfish, and vegetables such as maize (corn), beans, squash, nuts, fruits, and miscellaneous greens.

Gannon’s findings are based on documents from the Menéndez expedition and on the research of archaeologists who have studied St. Augustine and Indian artifacts.

But despite such irrefutable evidence, Gannon says changing the American lore about this traditional holiday hasn’t been easy.

“It is very difficult to get the powered-wig states to the north of Florida to recognize St. Augustine’s priority among American cities,” he says. “Even historians and journalists, particularly those of an Anglo-American bent, seem reluctant to accord any special stature to that dark-haired community, which was set in place one year following the death of Michelangelo and the birth of William Shakespeare.”

But in recent years, Gannon has made some progress in setting the record straight. In November 2004, he wrote a letter responding to an op-ed piece by writer/historian Charles C. Mann in the New York Times.

Mann, a Massachusetts-based author of many books and magazine articles, had written: “Until the arrival of the Mayflower, continental drift had kept apart North America and Europe for hundreds of millions of years. Plymouth Colony (and its less successful predecessor in Jamestown) reunited the continents.”

In his letter to the Times, Gannon stated: “By the dates Jamestown and Plymouth were founded, St. Augustine, Florida, was up for urban renewal. It was a city with a fort, church, market, college seminary, six-bed hospital, and 120 shops and homes.”

Mann later conceded this point by writing in the February 2006 Smithsonian magazine: “In September 1565 Pedro Menéndez de Avilés led about 800 Spaniards to colonize St. Augustine. The landing party celebrated their arrival, inviting the local Indians – an act of religious Thanksgiving in a permanent settlement that included both natives and newcomers. Sounds like Thanksgiving to me!”

Gannon, pleased by this concession, continues his efforts to get the real Thanksgiving story out, even as Americans begin this season’s preparations for a Thanksgiving feast of turkey, dressing, gravy, cranberry sauce, vegetables, breads and, of course, pumpkin pie.

“Happy Thanksgiving meals to all!” he says. “And don’t forget the garbanzo beans.”

The Florida Humanities Council, a nonprofit organization, sponsors public programs exploring Florida’s history and cultural heritage

Article published on Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2000

Copyright © Tampa Bay Newspapers: All rights reserved.

Making your own pie crusts is as easy as, well, pie

It's Thanksgiving tomorrow and in keeping with my one man crusade against convenience foods, I am dipping into my time-tested recipe box. Actually, I don't have a recipe box. I have a file in my computer that's called "recipe box" though.

I am a pie man, through and through. Few things give me the pleasure of cranking out pies in anticipation of major holidays. Thanksgiving is my day to shine thank you very much and nothing says Thanksgiving to me like a real pie or pies as the case may be. And by real I mean made from scratch.

I am a self-taught baker. My mother was a skilled cook and my grandmother too. But kitchens were woman turf and though I watched them bake on holidays I wasn't allowed anywhere near the action. It wasn't until I got out on my own that I realized that I not only like to bake, I'm actually pretty good at it.

I know, I know, I hear it all the time; "We're too busy nowadays to bake from scratch." Well, I'll be the first one to tell you that that's a damn lie. I have a schedule that would kill a lesser man and somehow I manage to cook dinner for myself every night and turn out a hell of a spread of baked goods on holidays. Nobody's too busy, but people have different priorities. Having different priorities is fine, just own that. Telling yourself that you're too busy is what makes you neurotic.

I have a real problem with convenience foods. I don't care that they're not organic or that they're mass produced. What bothers me about them is that they're tasteless. It bothers me too that I can't tell what's in something that's prepackaged. Scratch baking keeps me in control of what I put in my mouth and it also makes me expend some effort before I get a reward. Self-discipline never sleeps kids.

So here's my recipe for pie crust, the first step toward a blue-ribbon apple pie like mine. This recipe's also perfect for the bottom crust of a tartine, but that's a topic for another day. Making pie crusts is not hard, despite what everybody says. All it requires is that you pay attention. Try this, just once, and you will never buy another convenience food for the rest of your life.


2-1/2 cups of all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon of salt
1/2 teaspoon of sugar
1 cup of cold Crisco
1/2 cup of ice water

Put everything, including the bowl,  in the refrigerator for an hour before you start. Then mix the flour, salt and sugar together in the now-chilled bowl. Cut the chilled Crisco into small pieces and work it into the dry mix with a fork. When the Crisco and the dry mixture are blended, it will have the consistency of coarse meal.

Add the cold water in small drips and drabs and work the dough after every addition of water. After you have a quarter cup of the water worked in, slow down and start to test the dough after each time you add more water. Test the dough by squeezing a pinch between your fingers. If it's crumbly, then add more water. When it holds its shape and approaches the consistency of Play-Doh, stop adding water. Work the dough into a ball with your hands and wrap it in plastic wrap. Then put it back in the refrigerator. After an hour or so, cut the ball into two halves. The amount above will yield more than enough dough for a two crust pie.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Google Earth in 3D

I pay pretty close attention to the latest goings-on at Google. They are the most fascinating thing going in the world of readily accessible technology. I've had the good fortune to meet a few of their development people and it's not hard to see where Google gets its unassuming brilliance.

I stay pretty active in the world that revolves around SketchUp and after you've used one Google app it's not hard to see that all of their apps dovetail into one another. SketchUp bridges the gap between Google Earth and Google Maps and all three of those apps work together in ways that still amaze me.

I was reading the Google SketchUp blog yesterday and Christian Frueh and Manish Patel posted a video that shows what they've been working on over at Google Earth. Google's goal seems to be not only to map the world but to do it in 3-D.




The video shows some of the cities in California that have been rendered in 3-D on Google Earth. It's an amazing video and the technology behind those images is even more amazing.

Buildings get built in SketchUp then have facades applied to them using images that come from Google Maps' Street View. Then they get positioned and uploaded to Google Earth for the world to see. Then I think about it a little more and realize that every one of those apps and all of that imagery and all of that technology is available to anyone anywhere in the world for free. I hate to sound like I've been drinking the Kool-Aid, but thanks Google!

Google Earth
Google Maps
Google SketchUp