More Eel, Dear?

I wonder what was really served at the first Thanksgiving, in Massachusetts, in the freezing cold middle of the winter?  I bet it wasn't turkey, possibly the driest, most tasteless and unappetizing of all of the dead fowl meats.  Maybe turkeys aren't even fowl; they don't fly after all.  Maybe they're some kind of giant rodent or a feathered reptile.  If the Indians brought the meat I bet they didn't waste any time or precious arrows hunting in the snow for a smallish bird when there were huge moose and deer around.  There were probably fish and beans and squash.  I don't think potatoes were being cultivated in North America yet.  There certainly weren't any swine or cattle because the Pilgrims would have eaten them already.


I confess to disliking this kind of food.  Several years ago SuperK and I decided we could kill 2 birds with one stone and go someplace warm for Thanksgiving and Christmas both.  That way we got out of the cold while simultaneously managing to evade annoying family responsibilities.  One Christmas we drove to New Orleans.  As we were checking in to our hotel on Christmas Eve we asked the valet whether any restaurants would be open the next day.   He fixed us with a blank stare.


"All of them will be open," he said.


We had spent so many years in our conservative town that we forgot there were other ways to do things.  The roads were always eerily vacant when we drove to my parents.  It looked like the aftermath of some catastrophic virus or a neutron bomb.  In New Orleans we ended up in a jazz bar at noon, dressed in jeans and sweatshirts, for our Christmas dinner.  We ordered a dozen oysters, soaked them in hot sauce and horseradish, and looked at each other across the table.  We each raised one of the mollusks and tapped the shells together like they were crystal goblets full of some rare sparkling beverage.


"Best Christmas dinner ever," I said.
"Slurp," SuperK replied.


Ed. note: I did some research.  Foods at the first Thanksgiving in all likelihood included the following: deer, duck, seafood (including eels, seal, and shellfish), corn, and squash (including pumpkin).  Turkey maybe.  No potatoes, cranberries, dressing, or pies (no butter or wheat flour to make a crust.)  Lots of nuts and seeds.