Scottish Country Dance of the Day

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!

Hurray for the pumpkin pie! Though most associated with a traditional Thanksgiving dessert, pumpkins were indeed a mainstay of the Pilgrim diet in the New World, though not always in pie form. As a foodstuff, these new world squashes were wonderfully versatile, whether roasted, boiled, parched, or baked. The seeds were eaten and used as medicine, and dried pumpkin was ground into flour, or flattened and woven into mats. Even the gourds were used as bowls or as containers for grain. The ancestor of the pumpkin pie would start with a de-seeded pumpkin, filled with cream, eggs, honey, and spices, and baked in the ash of a cooking fire to create a custardy, crust-less pumpkin pie! By the early 18th century pumpkin pie had earned a place at the table as Thanksgiving became an important New England regional holiday. In 1705 the Connecticut town of Colchester famously postponed its Thanksgiving for a week because there wasn’t enough molasses available to make pumpkin pie! If pumpkin pie is on the menu today either in dance form or with a dollop of whipped cream on top, Happy Thanksgiving! 🎃 🥧