Turkey and Thanksgiving

Food! These four letters making a word, believe it or not, symbolizes and means more than any other things combined in this world. For rich, food may mean something to satisfy the craving coming from within one’s body. For poor, it may mean a living done for survival. For other animals, it may also mean survival along with instinct. For insects it may mean a monotonous task that guides their instinct. But, for us humans, food symbolizes a much greater deal than any other species in this world. We not only use food to eat, but rather also use for celebrations, grieving, meetings, and for religious purposes along with many other things. One such celebration in which we enjoy our food is “Thanksgiving.”

Thanksgiving, which is celebrated on 25 November, is a festival where we not only celebrate the harvest season, but also share the concept of sharing and helping each other out. There are no definite origins of thanksgiving, but historians assume thanksgiving to predate 16^th century. It is believed that thanksgiving originated from England. When the colonists founded America, they brought this culture with them. However, the name was particularly given in America. There were many foods that were consumed on this festival. But, what better to justify a festivity than to share a fat and juicy turkey where the main moral is the concept of sharing.

Turkeys were initially a game bird, because of its speed, which were hunted by the Aztecs. They became domesticated in the late 1600’s. There are many breeds of Turkeys, including domesticated and wild ones. These days’ turkeys are specially bred for their meaty breasts. When the pilgrims arrived in America, they liked turkey so much that they took some with them to Spain. But today, America is the only country that eats more turkey than any other nation. In fact, Sir George Washington Loved it so much that he wanted turkey to be the national bird of our country. It has also been the case that turkeys were eaten along with tortillas among Hopi Indians. So, when the first thanksgiving was done in 1620’s, there were many other foods that were feasted upon. For example, lobsters, deer, goose, seal and many others. Then, why did turkey become so attached with the modern Thanksgiving? Was it the size or the taste? Or perhaps other foods became scarce?

So, the answer is that not only other food became more scarce and the turkeys were big enough to feed a whole family, but also that they were massively being domesticated, which led to a substantial supply of turkey in modern America. As thanksgiving is a holiday where people share and give their thanks to other people and to god, what better meal can there be to share than a big turkey? It is also believed that when the pilgrims came to America, they could only find turkey to go around among many people for harvest festival. Nonetheless, there are many other stories relating turkey and thanksgiving.

But no matter how many stories we have for thanks giving, in the end, it really doesn’t matter whether you share a turkey, a lobster, a cow or a broccoli in thanksgiving or any other festival. What really matters is that we are sharing, which may very well, one day, lead to a better world- a world where people not only share food, but also share love, kindness and hope.

Ideas: Like Water For chocolate

Laura Esquivel’s “like water for chocolate,” presents the story of a Mexican girl and boy who are deeply in love with one another. Through out the story Laura has presented Tita De La Garza, the youngest daughter of De La Garza family, as a character who constantly fight with the society and especially her mother Elena to set her free from the family’s tradition of abandoning the youngest daughter to marry. The story is presented in period of twelve months with some kind of dish prepared each month, probably to site the importance of certain kind of food at certain month. Apart from deeply engaging story, Laura also gives us idea about how food affects different kind of activities we do in our everyday life.

The versatility that the food has on human activity is the power of the story itself. For instance, there is a place in the story where everyone starts acting aphrodisiac after eating “Quail in Rose Petal Sauce.” By that author is trying to give a reader the idea that certain kinds of food, probably because of the flavor, arouse sexual excitements. Also, in the story Tita tries to cook new and delicious food in order to make her and Pedro’s relation better. So, It won’t be wrong to say that food is also presented as a whole new language of communicating human emotions.

The other idea that the story delivers is the different shades of femaleness. There are several women characters in the story each distinctly different from one another. For example, Tita is portrayed to be a loving and caring girl, where as Mama Elena is shown rather strict and merciless women. Gertrudis, one of the sisters, is rebellious, and Rasaoura seems envious of Tita and see her as a competition regarding Pedro.

Therefore, this book seems to be delivering a lot of messages to the readers. It also seems like the story has a feminine flavor to it. Maybe because there are a lot of female characters and kitchen scenes. But whatever message the story might have for its reader, at the end its all about the love story of a girl who fights her way through the unsupportive crowd to lay in the arms of her man.