Melissa's Place

Adventures of a Local Thanksgiving

Though our guests came from as far as Calgary, Alberta, the food itself had a lot less distance to cover. The Loftii held their very first annual Local Thanksgiving in Peterborough this year. The idea came about from Maryann's reading of the 100 Mile Diet.

Featured at our table, besides our honoured guests Maggie & Larry Knorr, was Zeke the Organic-never-seen-the-inside-of-a-freezer-Turkey complemented by Carmen's own wild-rice stuffing, Maryann's special salad and the Roebuck's super secret apple and squash mash, Jay's How-Dare-You-Doubt-My-Culinary-Prowess mashed potatoes with bacon, Dad's Yes-Local-Beats-Don't-Need-to-Be-Microscopic beats'n'orange dish and Melissa's local apple pie and The-Splenda-May-not-be-local-but-the-pumpkin-is diabetic pumpkin pie.



There were many warm memories made in the preparation of this wonderful and momentous gathering. Melissa was saved from throwing herself through her kitchen window when trying to make pie dough by her lovely mother-in-law. Maryann struggled with finding appropriately-sized beats at the local farmer's market. Dad went to collect the beloved Zeke at the crack of dawn. And Jay, well, no one was sure whether he'd step out of that car with a bag of potatoes or a dish already-mashed to perfection. The doubters had to eat their words and do all of the Thanksgiving dishes.


Thanks to Carmen and Dad who graciously hosted the event and who were open to the new concept. And thanks to Maryann for being daring enough to broach the subject of a local theme for Thanksgiving dinner. Thanks to everyone for having an open mind and a flexible and fun-loving spirit about the whole affair. Maybe that's what Thanksgiving is all about.