Thankful for a Locavore Thanksgiving

It's the day after Thanksgiving--some call it Black Friday, but I like Buy Nothing Day better. I see in the news that OccupyXmas is also encouraging people to indulge in nonshopping activities today. That sounds good to me; I put away my rain barrel for the season, rode my bike to the library, and I might even rake some leaves.

We had a Thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat last night, and it included a few Enright CSA tomatoes that had turned slowly from green to red, plus some sweet peppers in the salad. And some things that were preserved or kept from pickups earlier in the season made it to the table, too, including pickled squash, which was delicious if I do say so myself; eggplant that had been roasted, the pulp frozen, and then made into baba ganoush; a few sweet potatoes that had kept well in the crisper drawer; and some zucchini I'd shredded and frozen months ago that made its way into a spice cake. I'm interested to know--if anyone is reading the blog still--what Enright-grown items made it to your Thanksgiving dinner. Let me know!

It was great to have so much locally grown food on the table for Thanksgiving dinner--I know I appreciate the food from the farm more than I do anything that comes from the supermarket. I also went down to Findlay Market for the first time in awhile on the day before Thanksgiving (I had only stayed away because of the prodigious amount of food we'd been getting from the farm, so I'll be going back more regularly now in the winter). I was happy to see it was quite busy at Market, and a few merchants I talked to said it had been fairly busy all week in the run up to Thanksgiving. We're lucky to have Findlay Market remain a thriving alternative to big grocery chains, so this winter, while the Enright CSA is on hiatus, I encourage members who might not go to Market too frequently to make a trip down. There are locally produced items all through the winter, even if the fresh stuff does mostly come from far away during the colder months.

So, there are plenty of leftovers, and tonight we'll have another Thanksgiving dinner that can't be beat, as Arlo would say. Happy Thanksgiving!