What Are You Eating for Thanksgiving?

5
2019
First Lady Grace Coolidge and Rebecca, the raccoon she and her family kept as a pet (Library of Congress)

Health Editor’s Note:  Where we lived in Ohio, we used to have many, many raccoons that would visit in the evening, perhaps even to eat the left over turkey carcasses.  It all started when we moved in and inherited three feral cats which we trapped and spayed and released. We fed those girls and of course having food outside the house, on a very regular basis, would begin to attract raccoons. We did not know the raccoons were there but they soon made themselves known.  One female raccoon always had six youngsters. The bandits never made a mess, bothered the cats, or explored the garbage can on the one night it would go out. As you can imagine, I could never eat a raccoon, or for that matter a turkey that I had a relationship with…..Carol

Raccoon Was Once a Thanksgiving Feast Fit for a President

by Jason Daley/Smithsonian.com

Turkey, ham, and even a bit of venison or elk would pass muster on most modern Thanksgiving tables. But a century ago, many diners would have been just as happy to see some raccoon sitting next to the gravy boat.



As Luke Fater reports for Atlas Obscura, Native Americans and early American settlers relied on small game like raccoon and squirrels to supplement their diets. In the American South especially, raccoons were an important staple for enslaved individuals.

“After they’d finish their workday, they were permitted to hunt in the middle of the night to get some extra protein in their diet,” Hank Shaw, author of Hunt, Gather, Cook, tells Fater.

Archaeological digs show that enslaved people even stewed whole raccoons in a manner similar to a West African cooking technique.

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5 COMMENTS

  1. The WHO report said that the various restrictive measures that Russia began to introduce in the 2000s led to a significant reduction in per capita alcohol consumption in the country. Moreover, now Russia can share its experience with other countries, as it is an example in the fight against alcoholism.
    It is noted that for the period 2004-2016, alcohol consumption in Russia, including strong, decreased by 43%. In 2017, the average Russian citizen over 15 drank about 11.1 liters of alcohol per year (in pure form), while the same Frenchman drank about 11.7 liters. At the same time, Le Monde clarifies that this is real progress, especially after the “dashing nineties” (painful for many of the collapse of the USSR), when “every second man in Russia drank too much.”
    The success of Russia is associated with the restrictions introduced: pricing policy, a ban on advertising, a ban on night sales. In addition, work is being done with the public. As a result, alcohol consumption is becoming less and less popular and “fashionable.”

  2. Of course, I long ago stopped eating meat and dairy products to help save the planet from global warming and to keep myself from dying from heart disease and dementia. I had a perfectly delightful whole food plant-based meal and I knocked every bite of it. I hope you all will start eating healthier too.

  3. Raccoons are funny creatures and it’s very interesting to watch them. We have so many people taking raccoons as pets. But we must understand that raccoons are by nature destroyers and “piglets”. It’s one thing to watch funny videos with raccoons, it’s quite another when they turn everything in the house upside down. I would not take a raccoon home 🙂
    You had Thanksgiving there, and yesterday I became the godfather: there were a lot of different and tasty food. Well, a bottle of scotch Grants whiskey, too 🙂

    • Thanks, JohnZ 🙂 I’m Godfather second time 🙂
      So, as i got you from your first post – thanks to you there was 1 turkey life saved this year? 🙂

  4. Raccoon is quite funny and intersting mammal. It clearly has fingers, but is it more like half monkey lemur or does it belong to marten family.

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