Thanksgiving Cantwell-style!

So when people talk about Thanksgiving and feelings surrounding it, three pretty strong view points peak out there heads..

1. Thanksgiving is a religious holiday meant to give thanks to (insert deity here) for the years blessings.
2. Thanksgiving is a sham in which we are celebrating the persecution and virtual annihilation of a native people.
3. Thanksgiving is a day when said persecution stopped and, just for a moment in time, there was sharing between hosts and travelers.

Now, I don't know much about any of this. I understand the anglo participants in the first thanksgiving brought their God and religion with them and felt the existing residents of 'the new world' needed to hear about it. I can buy that, perhaps, even after a bad harvest year and tensions among the English and the Americans, there was a sit down and a momentary peace and respect. But what I do know for a fact is that, Thanksgiving should be everyday. If you are blessed enough to have peace, love and happiness in your life and good friends to share it with, being thankful for what you have should happen everyday. Not on some stupid holiday. I have grand memories of Thanksgivings during my youth. The whole family went to Grandpa and Grandma Reimink's house and stayed the night. We woke up to a huge pancake breakfast at their church, then went home to have Melty Meat. I think it was pot roast but we called it Melty Meat because we didn't know what pot roast was back then. And bacon bits. I remember salad with bacon bits.

Anywho, below is a list of things Keith is thankful for...

-four limbs
-a sane mind that makes sane decisions
-things that he does not understand but respects (the guitar, foreign languages)
-the FREEDOM to do what I want (also the FREEDOM to NOT do things I don't want, ie voting if I feel it's unjust)
-being as far away from the states as much as I can
-the tendency to not be duped
-whiskey

Blahblahblah. Here are some pics of Thanksgiving Cantwell-style!!!

We went down to the village of Cantwell, about 30 miles south of where Tootie and I live. We have a bunch of friends that live in the Jack River Nation and we were graciously invited to share a meal with them.

We prepared some things for the feast. I made my infamous (self proclaimed infamy) Bleu Cheese Coleslaw, and we made a Sweet Potato Pecan dish.



Cleaned and cut sweet potatoes tossed with....



...toasted pecans and brown sugar.



But the highlight of the night was inarguably Jilly's Pork stuffed Pork! Jill and her sister Lynn are known between Talkeetna and Fairbanks as some of the best cooks on the market. And they never disappoint. This is Jill searing the pork.



And the pork as it sits on the roasting rack.



While we waited on the pork to slow roast to perfect awesomeness, we helped Tardy patch his down coat.



And Carl played with Kitty.



When the food was done we loaded up a van and the sled and took off to the end of the Nation and had a great meal. This was our transportation to Thanksgiving dinner. Yup, that's Tootie on the back of a dog sled.



But we didn't have dogs. We had Carl and Jill's snowmachine. Awesome.



The spread was amazing!!! And the company was just as good. Got to meet some great people that I hope we can hang out with again very soon.



Check out the three different forms of cheesecake!!! Damn!

And in a retraction from last week, the airfield which I said "nobody uses in the winter," is actually a place some people with ski planes can land. It doesn't happen often but it is why the trail is on the side of the airstrip. Grooves in the snow can harm the plane and/or the pilot when landing. So any skiing at the airstrip must be done in designated places.

Stay tuned...