Leslie Landrigan
speaker
43 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard Nov 2024
Leslie Landrigan’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
One of the things that they always ate and ate to excess is pumpkin. Pumpkin was hugely important. New England was the pumpkin dominion. And the first American folk song was written in 1620, and it was about how they ate too much pumpkin all the time.
Thanks, Mike. I'm happy to be on.
We know two things. We know that they had four deer that the natives brought, the 90 natives. And we know that the men went out shooting birds with the natives and the Englishmen. So birds, deer, probably shellfish, probably corn. That's what we know for sure. Lobster maybe.
What's interesting to me, if you call the meeting of indigenous people and English colonists in the early 17th century to eat food in... autumn, if you're going to call that a Thanksgiving, then the pilgrims in 1621 were not the first Thanksgiving. The first Thanksgiving would have been in 1607 in Phippsburg, Maine, where a failed colony was established for about a year.
But the circumstances were very, very similar. The two groups came together basically
it was more of a state dinner than it was a thanksgiving they were negotiating alliances they would trade with each other and they would defend each other against common enemies the food that they ate which we'll get into very soon here but is it the food that they always ate or was this some real special kind of food it was the food they usually ate.
They may have dressed it up a little bit and it would have been plentiful because of the time of year, but it was pretty much what they ate. I was gonna say one of the things that they always ate and they ate to excess and they have eaten it since 1620 and they're still eating it is pumpkin. Pumpkin was hugely important. And you know how we call people in Wisconsin cheese heads?
People used to call New Englanders pumpkin heads. New England was the pumpkin dominion, and the first American folk song was written in 1620, and it was about how they ate too much pumpkin all the time.
Actually, they did know of pumpkin in England, and pumpkin pie was really popular. The Spanish had brought it over. And then it kind of fell out of favor. But it grew well. It was more resistant to deer and insects and fungus and things like that. So I think it was just its hardiness, and it kept for a while.
They tended to stew it. They would do a lot with it, but mostly they'd chop it up and stew it and mix it up with other stuff. I don't know that it was terribly appetizing.
No.
It's pretty nutritious, though.
Well, you know, the natives, they grew what was called the three sisters, the pumpkin or squash, beans and corn, which for some reason having to do with amino acids or carbohydrates or something, I don't know, makes for a very nutritious diet.
no it wasn't for a long time they may have had turkey at the first thanksgiving turkeys are wild turkeys are really stupid birds they roost in the same place all the time so you know if you want dinner you just go get yourself a turkey but in in fact they were so easy to kill that they were obliterated from new england uh probably by the civil war turkey it was a part of the meal and it was something they ate
But chicken pie was the big thing for a long time. And it was a woman named Sarah Josepha Hale, who was a widow with five kids and needed money. So she wrote a book in 1827. It was a novel. I can't think of the name of it, but... She described a Thanksgiving dinner in New England, a classic New England Thanksgiving, which was really at the time only celebrated in New England.
And the book sold well, and she got a job as the editor of what became Godey's Lady's Book, which was this tremendously influential magazine. It was way more influential than Martha Stewart. And she she was an American influencer and she was the one who made turkey the centerpiece of the American meal. And she was also the one she lobbied for a long time to make Thanksgiving a national holiday.
And finally, Abraham Lincoln was the one who said, yeah, OK.
Well, for the pilgrims, it would have been something called nasamp, which was a native kind of a porridge made with cornmeal and nuts, berries, and maybe a sweetener. They probably would have had striped bass, which was a fish that was easy to catch, and that was also sustaining them. Probably would have had shellfish.
They would have had deer probably, and I'm guessing a lot of different kinds of wild fowl. I don't know that they would have had dessert, but they did develop this thing called Indian pudding, which was cornmeal with milk and a sweetener.
Oh, potatoes. Well, in 1620, we're talking about that first Thanksgiving, that first alleged Thanksgiving. They would have known about potatoes, but the potato they would have known about was the sweet potato, which the Spanish had brought to Europe. And it was highly prized because it was believed to be an aphrodisiac. and it was a luxury item.
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