Turkey for Turkey Day
Are you having turkey for Thanksgiving dinner? If the answer is “yes,” you’re like nine out of 10 American families. No one knows for sure if the Pilgrims ate turkey at the first Thanksgiving. In a letter to England, Pilgrim Edward Winslow wrote:
Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company almost a week.
Fowl could mean turkey, duck, pheasant or goose, which was the traditional holiday dinner back in England.
Where did the name turkey come from?
No one knows for sure. Here are some ideas. Which one do you like the best?
1.The bird is named after the country of Turkey.
2.Columbus thought he was in India when he landed in America. He thought turkeys were peacocks and called them tuka, which means peacock in Indian language.
3.Luis de Torres, a doctor who sailed to America with Columbus, named the bird tukki, which means “big bird” in Hebrew.
4.North American Indians called the bird firkee, which was corrupted to turkey.
5. The name comes from the sound the birds make when they are frightened: turc, turc, turc.
6. The birds were imported from Mexico to Europe during the Turkish Empire (16th century) and so named“turkey.”
Make a Tom Turkey Centerpiece That You Can Eat
You’ll need: an apple, a green olive with pimento, 9 wooden toothpicks, about 25 mini-marshmallows and food coloring
1. The day before Thanksgiving, color the mini-marshmallows and let them dry thoroughly.
2. Stick them onto five of the toothpicks, leaving about an inch uncovered on one end of each toothpick.
3. Hold the apple sideways, pretending it is the turkey’s body. Stick the marshmallow-covered toothpicks into the turkey’s ‘back’ in a fan shape to look like feathers.
4. Pull the pimento part way out of the olive so that it hangs down to look like the turkey’s snood (the red wobbly thing hanging down from its face). Stick the olive on another toothpick and poke it into the front end of the turkey for the head.
5. Take the remaining three toothpicks and put them under Tom Turkey in a tripod fashion to make him stand up.
Kids’ Stuff