A delicious, modest, simple-ingredients dinner with family:

A 4 lb local chicken (no turkey this year), squash, beets, brussels sprouts, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie. Most of it grown / raised within about 500’ of where we were eating it .

Wild cranberries found by chance in the woods!

Brussels sprouts picked an hour before dinner (one of the last crops alive in the garden, covered with bits of ice and frost as we picked them):

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Backyard chickens provided the eggs:

A cold frame keeps greens growing past the end of the season (we also used greens from the supermarket):

And, for fun, here’s a list of everything that went into the dinner sorted by location:

Grown / Raised by one of us:

  • Butternut squash
  • Beets
  • Raspberries
  • Brussels sprouts
  • Eggs
  • Potatoes
  • Sage
  • Basil
  • Thyme
  • Rosemary

From within a few miles:

  • Chicken (raised by a neighbor)
  • Cranberries (foraged from the woods)
  • Maple syrup (my sister made her own from backyard trees, but sadly we weren’t using it)
  • Pumpkin

From Maine:

  • Greens
  • Honey (Oakland, ME)
  • Butter (Old Orchard Beach)
  • Milk (Westbrook)
  • Bread, for stuffing (Portland, ME)

From the US:

  • Celery (North Carolina)
  • Red wine (Willamette Valley, Oregon)
  • Orange zest (Florida)
  • Flour (Kansas wheat)
  • Chestnuts (Ohio?)
  • Shallots
  • Vinegar
  • Salt (assumed)

From outside the US, though used in small quantities:

  • Olive oil (Italy)
  • Sugar (Brazil?)
  • Molasses (Guatemala)
  • Coconut milk (Thailand)
  • Chocolate (Madagascar beans, though processed in San Francisco)
  • Coffee (unknown)
  • Savory (unknown)
  • Nutmeg (Sri Lanka?)
  • Ginger (India?)
  • Black pepper (Vietnam?)

Or, as a map (in the spirit of Local Thanksgiving 2009): [googlemaps https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=207757792824774636460.0004cf1b098b46c5a133b&ie=UTF8&ll=13.292624,-7.919491&spn=64.414992,229.163978&t=p&output=embed&w=425&h=350]