Scottish Country Dance of the Day

Cranberry Tart

Thanksgiving Day (Canada)

Cranberries were a staple for Native Americans, who harvested wild cranberries and used them in a variety of remedies, drinks, and foods, including pemmican, a combination paste of dried berries, meats, and fats. Sailors used cranberries as a source of vitamin C to prevent scurvy. During World War II, American troops required about one million kilograms of dehydrated cranberries a year!

Pumpkin Pie

Thanksgiving Day (US)

Pumpkins were a mainstay of the Pilgrim diet in the New World, though not in traditional pie form. As a foodstuff, pumpkins were wonderfully versatile; they provided sustenance whether they were roasted, boiled, parched, or baked. Seeds were eaten, and used as medicine. Dried pumpkin was ground into flour, or flattened and woven into mats, and the gourds were used as bowls, and containers for grain. Pumpkins were sometimes hollowed out and filled with spiced and/or sweetened milk, and then boiled; early settlers would drink this straight from the gourd. They would also take the seeds out of a pumpkin, and fill it with cream, eggs, honey, and spices, before baking the whole thing in the ash of a cooking fire. When the filling was scooped out, along with the flesh of the pumpkin, it was a bit like a custard, or a crust-less pumpkin pie.