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    Third-Wheel Meal

    In last week’s ’tis the Seasonings post, I wondered why “ginger” and “red hair” were synonymous. Paula from Monday Morning Rail replied with the answer which probably trumps all others (thanks, Paula!).  Ginger Grant, the glam character from the sixties sitcom Gilligan’s Island had a healthy head of red hair.  Sometime after the sixties a “ginger” became a person with red hair.  I’m satisfied, so let’s move to a question more appropriate for this week.  Why is (America’s) Thanksgiving celebrated on a Thursday?

    Yes, it’s time for my annual Thanksgiving rant.  Rather, my everything-steps-all-over-Thanksgiving rant.  It’s not really an annual rant but perhaps it should be.  Three years ago I had so much to vent about Thanksgiving’s due, it took me two blog posts to let off the steam (see A Distant Third).  This year I realized, zero progress has been made since then.  In fact, the situation is snowballing.  Thanksgiving is finding less and less air as it gasps between the behemoths known as Halloween and Christmas.

    Poor choice of word, “snowballing”.  It’ll make readers think about Christmas and I need you to stay focused.  My campaign is to keep each of the year-end holidays corralled into its respective month.  In other words, November equals Thanksgiving. (Repeat ten times, please).  Turkeys and pumpkin pie, not Santas and plum pudding.

    There, I said it.  Apologies to those of you who’ve already shopped and wrapped presents.  Apologies to the rest of you who’ve already decorated your houses.  I’m just trying to give Thanksgiving its rightful place among the “big three” instead of its laggard position as “third wheel”.

    You can name a dozen things associated with Halloween, and two dozen more with Christmas.  But with Thanksgiving?  Three (at least here in America).  We have the meal itself, the parades, and football.  That’s pretty much it.

    Let’s dig a little deeper into the American Thanksgiving trifecta.  The meal is hanging in there despite efforts to make it healthier.  Turkey, stuffing, and pumpkin pie are still Thanksgiving staples (while “tofurky” is not).  I sometimes wonder why I don’t enjoy these foods on other days of the year as well.  Also, more people make the Thanksgiving meal at home than order online or go to a restaurant. (Do I have the data to back this up?  No, I do not.)  But I must acknowledge Friendsgiving, which has become common enough to remove the quotation marks.  Not only is Friendsgiving celebrated on any day but Thursday, the table spread can be decidedly different. Watch out.  There may come a November when – GASP! – more people celebrate the “friends” version than the “family”.

    Parades remain more about Thanksgiving than the other two holidays.  You’ll find the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on television this week and at the same time, Chicago, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and Plymouth, MA host large-scale parades.  But here’s my Davey-downer factoid.  The Macy’s Parade may be the world’s largest (as well as the second-oldest in America) but it’s also an imposter.  It began as the “Macy’s Christmas Parade” in 1924, designed to launch a longer retail season at the end of the year.  So you see, the name may have changed but the parade is still decidedly “holly-jolly”.

    Football brings out the smirk in sports fans again this Thanksgiving.  As they have every year since 1934 (save the WWII years) the NFL’s Detroit Lions will be playing on Thanksgiving Day.  As they have been every year (seemingly), the Detroit Lions are a truly awful football team.  In the last twenty years the Lions have amassed exactly four winning seasons.  This year?  The Lions are the only team in the NFL without a win.  The Lions are so bad in fact, the NFL has added two other games to your Thanksgiving Day lineup so you have options.

    We’re almost done here, but don’t panic; I haven’t forgotten the original question.  Why is Thanksgiving celebrated on a Thursday?  Here’s the easy answer.  President Lincoln made it so back in 1863, as the final Thursday in November.  President Roosevelt also made it so back in 1941, more specifically the fourth Thursday in November.  Yeah, but… why a Thursday?

    Here’s the real answer (or at least my answer).  Thanksgiving is on a Thursday.  Thursday is named for the Norse God Thor.  Thor is the God of Thunder.  See the pattern?  Thanksgiving-Thursday-Thor-Thunder.  It’s the whole “Th” thing.  Thanksgiving doesn’t really fit on a Friday (but maybe Friendsgiving does).  Besides, by Friday we’ve forgotten all about turkey and stuffing as we turn to computers and shopping malls.

    Now then, banish all that “Th” nonsense from memory.  The real intent here is to give Thanksgiving its proper time and space mid-holiday season.  Let’s move Turkey Day from “third wheel” to “equal wheel” by finding more Thanksgiving stakes to claim in the month of November.  Maybe we should all dress up as pilgrims.  Maybe we should also have our kids “trade” instead of “trick-or-treat”.

    With that, I wish you a Happy Thanksgiving.  And next week, I might even wish you a Merry Christmas.  You know, in December.

    Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

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    ’tis the Seasonings

    When I baked a batch of molasses cookies for Halloween last month, I pulled ground ginger, cinnamon, and cloves off the spice shelf without so much as a glance at the labels. I recognized the spices by their colors and textures. Had I taken two seconds more to peruse the other spices nearby, I would’ve noticed the thin layer of dust on their bottle tops. Yep, my life needs a change of season-ings.

    Here’s the count, at least in my kitchen.  On the spice shelf, I have fifty-two bottled or bagged inhabitants.  In the spice drawer (essentially an overflow of the shelf) I have another twenty-six.  No-calculator math brings my total to seventy-eight unique flavorings, yet how many do I use regularly?  Maybe a dozen.  I ask the same of you. How many spices live in your rack/drawer/shelf?  Of those, how many do you use week-in and week-out?

    We’re missing out on adventure, you and me.  My recipes are bland enough to demand little more than garlic salt or oregano (on the savory side), and cinnamon or ginger (on the sweet).  I could spice things up if I’d just explore more exotic recipes… or simply brighten the ones I already make.  My mantra should be “Spice is the variety of life” (not the other way around).

    For inspiration, I could take a trip to Indonesia’s Maluku Islands.  Once upon a time, nutmeg, cloves and mace could be found only on the Malukus, earning their nickname “The Spice Islands”.  I have this vision of a pungent-smelling tropical oasis of colorful trees, plants, and bushes, everything edible and delicious.  I’m running around sampling this and that like a kid in a candy store.  Kind of like (you remember the scene) the Chocolate Room in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

    Spices have tons of trivial facts and here are some of my favorites:

    • Allspice tastes like cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves all rolled into one.  Keep that in mind the next time you bake.
    • Saffron is one of the most expensive spices in the world.  Some varieties ring in at $400 for a few ounces.  Maybe because it takes a hundred hand-harvested flowers to produce a single gram of the spice?
    • If you find a blend called Chinese Five Spice, you can season your food to be sour, bitter, salty, sweet, and pungent all in one shake of the bottle.
    • “Masala” means “spice”… and nothing more.  In other words, be wary of that next dish of chicken masala; the seasoning could be a blend of anything.
    • Spice blends are often associated with countries, as with Harissa (North Africa) and Jerk (Jamaica).  The United States?  Pumpkin pie spice, of course.  We Americans obsess over anything pumpkin spice.
    “If You Wannabe My ‘Clove-r’?”

    Because the musically inclined want to know, I took this opportunity to read up on The Spice Girls, the British girl group from the 1990s.  I was disappointed to learn the name has nothing at all to do with spices.  Each of the five women took on a nickname to include the word “spice” but only Geri Halliwell’s (“Ginger Spice”) made any reference to a real spice… and that reference was only to her red hair.

    [On that note, can anyone explain ANY connection between “ginger” and “red hair”?  My bottle of ground ginger is decidedly yellow…]

    Diaspora Co. Spices gift box

    Here’s the real crime with my spice shelf.  Almost all occupants are standard brands, like McCormick or Spice Islands, uniformly bottled in identical quantities.  Neither brand is organic (let alone an advertised proponent of fair trade).  Furthermore, their spices are processed and packaged in a factory, while I have zero excuses not to be shopping at a local store like Penzeys.  You only buy as much as you need at spice stores, and you can be assured of fewer steps in the journey from source to you.  Of course, you can also shop spices online at places like Diaspora and Burlap & Barrel.

    Speaking of “as much as you need”, I can say with certainty most of my spices are past desired shelf life.  No, they’re not expired; more like “faded”.  They won’t pack as much punch as they did in their prime.  Here’s the rule of thumb with spices: if whole (i.e., cloves) best used for 2-3 years; if ground (i.e., cinnamon) best for 1-2.

    If I took a poll of “favorite spice” I’d get a different answer every time (including a few men who’d choose a Spice Girl).  My favorite spice?  Red pepper flakes.  I use them liberally in a lot of dishes, including pasta and soups.  I describe them as a convenient after-thought, a final flourish as I’m about to sit down at the table.  Fire on top of my food.

    Maybe if I invested in one of these spinning countertop racks, the mere visibility of so many options would spice up my life.  I’d be more in line with Simon & Garfunkel’s “… parsley, sage, rosemary & thyme”.  But if I’m limited to a shelf (and a drawer) my spices are out-of-sight, out-of-mind.  Just a shake of red pepper flakes and call it good.

    Some content sourced from the Relish blog article, “15 Spice Facts You Never Knew”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

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    Scour Power Bars

    I like to calculate trivial quantities for my own entertainment. For instance, in the timeframe of my years in grade school, my mother made me over 2,000 sack lunches (thanks, Mom!)  Or how about, in the sixteen years my wife & I have lived at our current address, I’ve driven up and down our street over 12,000 times. Trivial or not, these numbers lend perspective to things we don’t think a lot about.  Like soap.  And my soap number is +650.  That is, the number of bars I’ve consumed over the years in a daily effort to keep clean.

    Seriously, when was the last time you gave a bar of soap more than a passing glance?  The poor little 3″ x 2″ x 1″ pastel-colored brick spends its month-long life sitting somewhere in your shower or bath, 23.75 out of 24 hours a day.  In those remaining fifteen minutes (probably less) he gets his one moment of adventure, traveling all over your body while he works to return you to fresh ‘n’ clean.  But with each passing day, Mr. Soap gets smaller and smaller until the dreaded moment of deliberation.  Is his remaining sliver too little for effective scour power?  You’d never know it with all the water, but maybe Mr. Soap sweats as he shrinks, anticipating the moment he gets demoted from the shower to the trash bin.

    In the spirit of don’t try this at home (because it’s already been determined), a bar of soap really does last about a month, assuming a daily shower.  And that’s me.  I take a morning shower every day whether I need it or not.  Even if there’s nothing to “get ready” for I still want to face my day like there is.  So, Mr. Soap matters to me. You can understand why I’m getting into a bit of a lather on this topic.

    In the chemistry lab, soap equals a surfactant derived from the chemical compound of a fatty acid.  In the supermarket, soap is simply a waxy, floral-smelling substance you purchase in solid or liquid form.  Behold some of the more common brands in America (as advertised online by Wal*Mart):

    • Caress
    • Coast
    • Degree
    • Dial
    • Dove
    • Irish Spring
    • Ivory
    • Jergens
    • Lever
    • Olay
    • Safeguard
    • Yardley
    • Zest

    Admit it, as unimportant as soap may be to you, there’s a favorite brand out there, probably from the list above.  Mine is a little more exotic.  I go with Dr. Bronner’s All-One Hemp Lavender Pure-Castile (and how’s that for a mouthful of soap?)  Dr. Bronner’s is harder to find and more expensive than the commoners above, but I sure like it.  Maybe it’s the hemp; you know, maybe I’m getting a little “high ‘n’ clean”?  You could claim I’m “soap-stoned” when I shower.

    My wife & I stream most of our entertainment these days so we miss a lot of commercials.  But ads for soap – at least those of several decades ago – took scrubbing bubbles to ridiculous claims.  Coast convinced you its product would “awaken your senses” and “bring you back to life” in the mere minutes of a shower.   Irish Spring advertised itself as “springtime in a bar” as a towel-clad Irishman cut into the soap with a knife he just happened to be carrying, uh… where, exactly?  And Zest had you thinking “you’re not fully clean until you’re Zest-fully clean”.  As if Zest was somehow noticeably better than other options.

    Even though my Dr. Bronner’s might label me a soap snob, I want to give a shoutout to Ivory.  The simple white bars claim to be 99.44% pure soap.  The other 0.56% includes the sharp tang of fresh ginger root, a smell I will always associate with my grandparent’s house.  I can’t come up with another smell so “cleanly” connected to my distant past, so Ivory gets my nod of gratitude.

    Some of you reading this far dismiss the entire topic since your preference is liquid soap.  I say, good on you!  Liquid soap has all of the cleansing benefits of bar soap and is typically a better moisturizer for the skin.  Liquid soap is also less likely to gather germs than Mr. Soap since he sits fully exposed in the shower all day every day.  But bar soap contains fewer ingredients and more natural ingredients than liquid – better for you and for the environment.  As they say, tom-ay-to, tom-ah-to. 

    This opera of soap is just about done, but not before I leave you with one final trivial number: 4,800.  That’s how many years soap’s been a thing, invented by those brilliant but ancient Egyptians.  Think about it the next time you unearth a mummy.  You’ll never know who’s under the wrappings, but at least you can be pretty sure he or she was left fresh ‘n’ clean.

    Some content sourced from the RompaGroup article, “17 facts about soap, the most popular hygiene product in the world”, the Healthy Group article, “Is Liquid Soap Better than Bar Soap?”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

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    Once-A-Year Cake-and-Cheer

    I caught a radio show last week where a caller mentioned her birthday fell on December 25th. She lamented how, as a kid, she received presents for Christmas and others for her birthday, not knowing which were meant for which. Without missing a beat the radio host goes, “Hey! At least you get to share your birthday with Jesus! I have to share mine with Madonna!”

    I decided to play the game myself (and you can too, at the Famous Birthdays website).  Type your special day into the box at the top of the screen and up pop all these, uh, interesting people you share something of a kinship with.  You’ll see names, ages, and occupations under big, colorful photos.  People the website deems famous.  But don’t get too excited now.  I had to scroll through seventeen before I recognized anyone.  Maybe that’s because their occupations are Rapper, YouTube Star, and TikTok Star?  For Pete’s sake, can’t they have real jobs?

    Mercifully, I find “real” birthday buddies among the self-proclaimed famous.  Steve Perry – lead singer for the band Journey – shares my birthday, born eleven years before I was.  So does Sam Cooke, whose soulful voice captured hearts in the 1960s.  But one birthday buddy stands gracefully above the rest.  Diane Lane, exactly three years my younger, is one of my favorite actresses.  When Diane turned 14 in 1979, she debuted as the adorable lead in the France/Italy adventure A Little Romance.  I’ve been smitten ever since.

    Ms. Lane

    Birthdays represent a variety of celebrations as we pass through life, don’t they?  As babies, our parents celebrate for us since we have no clue what the fuss is all about.  As young children, the celebrations become the most colorful: parties with friends of the same age and activities from amusement parks to backyard bouncy houses.  As young adults, birthdays tend to be celebrated at restaurants and bars, with plenty of alcohol flowing.  In the decades following we seem to favor SURPRISE! parties.

    Now, as my sixtieth birthday looms like the next interstate exit, I’m all about more subdued celebrations.  A quiet dinner out with my wife.  A trio of phone calls from my kids.  A single piece of birthday cake instead of something big enough to hold five dozen candles.  Wouldn’t want the day to pass without acknowledgment but the simpler the gesture the better.

    Speaking of birthday cake, it’s perhaps the single tie that binds as we celebrate our years young and old.  I picture a baby’s birthday cake as small and round, with a big #1 candle on top.  Cover your kid in plastic and put the cake close enough so he or she can dig in with both hands.  We have these priceless and messy pictures for each one of our kids.

    Young children have the most adventurous cakes.  I picture a blank rectangle just waiting to be populated with frosting, decorations, and little toys, like an artist’s canvas.  Dump trucks working on a cake-top construction site.  Animals living in a cake-top jungle.  Ballerinas dancing across a cake-top stage.  The possibilities are endless.

    After childhood, cake designs evolve to the age itself.  Whether big wax numbers or individual candles, the focus of the cake becomes the number.  After enough of those years, we try to be more subtle (ex. spell out the age with candles) so we don’t set the house on fire.  Later in life, we save the biggest celebrations (and cakes) for the round numbers because ages 80, 90, and 100 are achievements in themselves, aren’t they?

    There’s evidence to suggest birthdays and cakes have been a combo as far back as ancient Roman times but for me, birthday cake is simply a nod to happy childhood memories.  Birthday-cake-flavored ice cream, cookies, and even protein bars are all the rage for this reason.  We just want to be kids again, breathlessly anticipating the celebration of our special day.

    Some content sourced from IMDb, the Internet Movie Database, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

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    Peanuts and Pumpkins

    Three years ago, New York Magazine’s website Vulture ranked all forty-five Peanuts animated television specials from worst to best, including a paragraph on each one to justify its ranking. I wouldn’t have guessed Charlie Brown, Linus, and Lucy appeared in fifteen television specials let alone forty-five. But let’s be honest; only two Peanuts adventures have had any staying power: It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (#2 on Vulture’s list), and A Charlie Brown Christmas (#1).

    Maybe I’ll weigh in on the Christmas special in a couple of months, but with Halloween on the horizon I need to speak to the runner-up. It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown first aired on television in 1966, so those who were alive back then (me) have the chance to see it for the 56th time this year. But maybe not? The networks stopped showing Great Pumpkin two years ago.  Other than PBS in select locations, you’ll have to buy the DVD or subscribe to Apple TV+ to watch Charlie Brown get another rock in his trick-or-treat bag.

    Writing about a Peanuts special dates me – there’s no question.  But it’s still worth the words.  The Peanuts gang was the comic strip of my youth.  I remember the anticipation of the Sunday morning newspaper and the “funnies” pages.  Charles M. Schulz and his Peanuts characters always got the first slot.  When the specials debuted in the mid-60s, it was a big deal.  It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown only showed up once a year, in mid-October.  We didn’t have DVRs (let alone streaming) back then, so watch it live or you’d miss it.  Peanuts specials were always the hot topic of conversation at grade school the next day.

    After so many watches, Great Pumpkin becomes an interesting study.  You pick up on the little things, the ones which would implode under the weight of today’s social media scrutiny.  Right out of the credits, Linus & Lucy head to a patch to pick out a pumpkin.  On the way, Linus picks up an apple among the fallen leaves, takes a single bite, and tosses it into a trash can. (Unnecessary waste!).  In another scene, Lucy stabs a pumpkin with a giant knife as she begins carving (Children with weapons!).  Then Linus looks on in horror and says, “I didn’t realize you were going to kill it!” (Violence!)

    Great Pumpkin touches on other themes to sink today’s children’s shows, including bullying, teasing, and casual use of words like “stupid” and “blockhead”.  Charlie Brown is the butt of several jokes, including Lucy pulling the football away just as he tries to kick, and the girls using the back of his head to draw a pumpkin carving design.  Yes, I laughed at these scenes when I was a kid, but only because I wasn’t that kid (and because it was the 1960s humor).

    Here’s an oddity with Great Pumpkin.  You’d think a short animation would be a continuous story.  Not so.  Great Pumpkin jumps awkwardly between disconnected scenes, from carving pumpkins to trick-or-treating to a Halloween Party.  The middle minutes shift randomly to Snoopy acting out his costumed “World War I Flying Ace” in the middle of France.  It’s as if Great Pumpkin didn’t have enough Halloween material to fill a half-hour, or at least needed an excuse to include Snoopy in the story.

    Finally, “the Great Pumpkin” itself is completely akin to Santa Claus, but for a different holiday.  Linus writes a letter to the Great Pumpkin to say he’s looking forward to the arrival on Halloween night and hoping for lots of presents.  The Great Pumpkin visits pumpkin patches the way Santa Claus visits houses.  There’s even a mention of “pumpkin carols”.  You’re left wondering why this figment of Linus’ imagination wasn’t a little more unique.

    If you haven’t watched It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, I probably haven’t given you reasons to rush to your television.  It’s simple and disjointed, and the animation doesn’t win the show any awards (even in the 1960s).  But just like A Charlie Brown Christmas, the characters are endearing, and the story has a pretty good message.  I’ll probably find myself looking for it again next year.

    Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

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The sky is not completely dark at night. Were the sky absolutely dark, one would not be able to see the silhouette of an object against the sky.

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