SC - Thanksgiving and Semi-Alternate Lifestyles (long)

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Susan P Laing wrote:
> Mari
> (who had decided that it's incredibly unfair that Australia doesn't have these
> types of celebrations - the closest we've got would be Australia Day... where
> bar-b-que "Sausages in a Bun" and "Pies with sauce" seem to rule supreme).......

As has been suggested, you can easily start your own day. We haven't
been doing as much entertaining as we used to since our son was born and
the place filled with kid paraphernalia, but we used to open our home
for the Lunar New Year (and still do, in a less ambitious way) each year
in the late winter / early spring, and then we'd usually have an
additional, loosely structured function in the early autumn. This wasn't
for any particular occasion: we'd just look at each other and say, "It's
time to throw a wonton party." Our frequent guests, the Usual Suspects,
came up with this name but it's fairly apt. What we used to do was all
the prep but very little actual cooking, setting up the necessary
ingredients for various Chinese dumplings with three or four different
fillings, pots of boiling water, soup stock, fresh and fried noodles,
steamers for breads and dumplings, a wok or three, various condiments
and pickles, and lots of fresh fruit. People could come and make their
own dumplings (in some peculiar and amusing shapes, too), in short, play
with their food and eat it, too, with Susan and myself keeping things
safe and giving frequent demos. It was always a lot of fun, even when
our friend Jim (known to some on this list as Count Sir Horic) dumped an
entire box of shrimp chips into a wok full of hot oil...

My point is that this was just our tradition, not an observance of some
public holiday, although those are nice too. Remember, though, that as
Lord Ras pointed out, Thanksgiving was only set as an official national
holiday in the U.S. in the 1860's, and many people had been celebrating
it for years in spite of a lack of official status. Most cultures have
some kind of harvest festival.

So what do you think you might have at an Australian harvest festival
feast? I assume local foodstuffs as of harvest time would figure
heavily, but I have no idea what they might be... I'm thinking of red
meat such as lamb, possibly a large assortment of seafood and fruits?    

Work with us, here ;  )

Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
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