Hi Everyone!
Thanksgiving is upon us. We would like to thank everyone for their contributions to this study so far. This holiday presents us with a very interesting set of circumstances, it is an opportunity to critique what is quite possibly the biggest and least energy efficient meal of the year, but it is also a time when you are with your family, with the people who you grew up eating and cooking with, or maybe learned how to cook from. Because Thanksgiving is such a constant in our lives, it serves as an amazing tool to understand cooking habits over time.
We would like you to take this chance to ask the people you are eating with about their family's Thanksgiving traditions. Where did the recipes come from? How have the dishes and ways of cooking changed over peoples life times? Are there certain traditions that are steadfast or are there ones that take new forms year to year? What are the different ways they have cooked turkey/stuffing/gravy/potatoes? Why has that changed over time?
Because Thanksgiving is a social event, you are eating, talking and cooking together, we think it would be a great opportunity for you to think about the discussion we had about the meaning embedded into food when cooking for other people. Also, are you finding any of the skills and tips from the blog in other people's cooking? If so, that might be a great place to bring up the fact that that method saved a little bit of energy.
We would love it if you started a conversation with your close ones and got people thinking about energy and how that can relate to their cooking habits. While Thanksgiving might not be the time anyone is willing to alter their views on cooking, there is always the day after - where people feel stuffed and a little guilty for eating all that food. Maybe that is a good opportunity to to open up more conversation.
Please post your thoughts and reporting in the comments section, along with any reflections you may have had on energy consumption related to cooking a Thanksgiving meal. We would be interested to know if it is something that is now on your conscious when you look at food. Thank you and have a wonderful Thanksgiving!
-Huey
Cooking Thanksgiving dinner is kind of an example of how energy can be saved through group cooking. There were 25 of us at the Thanksgiving table this year. We had the oven set to 350 for most of the day. that is lots of energy used but we always had the oven full with two or three things cooking at once and we had enough food left over to feed all 25 of us for a couple more days. When we used the leftovers, we did not reheat too much either. The morning after Thanksgiving, one household made empanadas filled with bits of everything from the dinner the night before. I think the lesson learned from Thanksgiving is that there is economy in size. It is a good idea to cook a fun meal with other people when we can and to make enough to eat the leftovers in various creative ways during the following week.
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