Canada 2025, Part VII: A Canadian Thanksgiving

Wednesday, October 8 was, roughly, the halfway point of our trip's timeframe. We were leaving for Halifax on Friday, the wedding was set for Saturday the 11th, and then we were wheels up on Sunday the 12th -- back to Omaha, back to reality, back to the prison that has become the United States. So, we really only had two free days to play around with, the Wednesday and Thursday in the middle of the week.

Well, we had plans for Thursday (this will be covered as well, later) so...Wednesday it was. Wednesday would be our big Thanksgiving dinner with Daisy's grandmother, aunt and uncle. 

I'd like to pause here and state that for a vacation, we were again suffering from the structure of "we have something to do every single day we're here" and by this time, the halfway point, it was beginning to wear on us a little. When we're tired, and when we can't sleep that well because of the hotel bed, and when we've been running almost nonstop for the better part of a full week...usually it wears on us. We will fight or squabble or snap at each other over the smallest, most trivial shit. Yet, this time around, both of us pointed out to one another multiple times what a great, fantastic trip it had been. 

And it was, really. In our many years of marriage, Daisy and I have made a lot of different trips to different places together. I'd put this one in the top three. 

Yes, we were running on adrenaline only, even by the midway point. Yes, we were achy and constantly exhausted, having random short-lived allergic reactions to things or, in Daisy's case, suffering from POTS attacks here and there. The vast majority of my meals were vegan turkey sandwiches and ketchup chips, with a low-caffeine Monster to wash it down. Daisy and I both also drank at least one Liquid I.V. per day, and still felt dehydrated even after each of us drinking a 1L bottle of water (or more) on that every day on top of that. Yes, we could get crabby with one another for brief periods -- it is not all wine and roses, as marriage and travel never is -- but through it all, I've never felt more bonded and present with my wife, and she mentioned the same about me. I wanted to mention all of this because it is easy to lose yourself in routine and stress when you're at home just trying to get through life, one work week after the next, and that can eat you alive before you even realize it. 

At the same time, I also realize that it's taken forever to get through this series of recap posts, but...we did a lot of things. And since we've returned home, normal life has taken back over -- Pete has been really sick, I threw my hip out for a couple of days, etc -- I will get to covering that when I get to it, but for now, let's continue.

Anyway.

That Wednesday morning we were on a mission -- go to all of the local grocery stores, again, and pick up everything needed for a Thanksgiving dinner. You think this would be simple, especially for only a small group of people and a full 40% of them who don't eat meat, but it's really not. Here's what we needed to acquire:

• Gluten-free stuffing ingredients (bread, spices, celery, onions, etc)
• Potatoes good for mashing
• Vegan butter
• Vegan gravy ingredients
• Vegetables as sides (carrots, corn, green beans, etc)
• A turkey alternative for Daisy and myself
• Cranberry sauce, or the ingredients for it
• Greens of some sort
• A dessert of some sort that everyone could enjoy
  
  

And various other odds and ends.

In the states, this is generally really easy -- we could pick up the vast majority of those things at Whole Foods; actually, we could probably get all of them at Whole Foods, and if not there, at Trader Joe's.

However, this was rural Atlantic Canada -- there are not Whole Foods or Trader Joe's there. Hell, even the closest Costco was in Halifax, a four-hour round trip of driving alone. 

Now, for me, there is a list of "absolute must-haves" for a Thanksgiving dinner, for the traditional American version of Thanksgiving. That list starts with a good vegan turkey (usually Field Roast), rolls with butter or vegan butter, gravy, green bean casserole, a mountain of mashed potatoes and gravy, a larger mountain of stuffing with more gravy, corn, carrots, and canned jellied cranberry sauce. Anything outside that is a bonus, and sometimes I can go without one or more of these things if necessary. At home in the states, I don't give a shit about desserts -- people get all up in arms about how there must be candied yams or pumpkin pie, and let me tell you, I absolutely don't care. My focus is on the meal and having enough leftover turkey, gravy, and stuffing for a week. 

In Canada though, it's different. Produce in Canada is harder to come by, more expensive, or both. Potatoes are fine and easy to find -- PEI produces some of the best potatoes on the planet, and Nova Scotia and New Brunswick are no slouches either when it comes to potato farming. Fresh green beans, even shortly before Canadian Thanksgiving? Sure, you can get them, but you'll pay for them.

We went through the local stores -- Atlantic Superstore and Sobey's -- both grocery chains that we like, actually, and tend to get most of our food at when we're in Canada -- to systematically get the ingredients for Thanksgiving one by one. As mentioned, potatoes were easy to get, as was the expensive fresh green beans. Frozen corn, gluten-free bread for the stuffing, a bag of carrots, onions, celery, gravy ingredients, etc were picked up one by one, from one store or the other. Fresh herbs and bouillon were ludicrously expensive, but we got them -- they were needed for the stuffing as well as the gravy. We figured grandma would make her own rolls (she always does, so we left that to her) and focused on the stuff we knew we had to bring -- so Daisy got fresh cranberries to boil down into a cranberry sauce, gluten-free Oreos (at $11 a bag, JFC) and cocowhip for a dessert of "mud," and we settled on Jack & Annie's jackfruit-based "chicken" tenders for us as our turkey replacement:

In the states or in Canada, we know these are good. We get them fairly frequently. And they're gluten-free, so Daisy doesn't have to worry about getting inflammation from the breading or what have you.

"The thought occurred to me," I told Daisy long after dinner was over and we were back in the hotel, "that I could have just taken a pack of the sandwich turkey up there and poured gravy on it, and that would've been fine too."

"You know, that thought crossed my mind too," Daisy replied.

So, we lugged our haul up to the family homestead to find that Daisy's grandmother had already made an apple pie for dessert, as well as the cranberry sauce, herself while we were gone, and had not made rolls. We did not say anything. Instead, Daisy got to work and I was given the job of "running blocker" as much as possible with grandma.

Let me explain that one -- Daisy's grandmother does not like anyone in her kitchen. She is a control freak with the kitchen stuff. She allows very few people to do anything in the kitchen alone, and that only sometimes includes Daisy. It absolutely does not include Daisy's mother, when she visits. Generally the in-laws also get a pass -- Daisy's aunts don't tend to get any shit about it, and one of them (the mother of the bride, Daisy's cousin, who we were there to see get married), explicitly puts that kitchen on lockdown when there's a big family event...and surprisingly, grandma listens to her. 

I will also add that generally I get a pass as well. I don't know why. But I do. Most of the time. 

So I was given the job of keeping Daisy's 92-year-old grandmother occupied so that she wasn't hovering over Daisy the entire time she was cooking the Thanksgiving dinner. This means I was to basically talk to her, see if I could get her to tell stories to occupy her mind, etc -- so that she wouldn't hover over Daisy and watch everything she was doing. Mind you, Daisy and I have both cooked numerous meals in the past for this woman, it's not like she doesn't know we know our way around the kitchen and, more importantly, it's not like she doesn't know we already know her quirks and how she likes things done, the places everything is supposed to be in, and so forth. Believe me, we do. 

I adore talking to grandma; she tells the most fascinating stories about growing up and living in rural Nova Scotia, about the town, the land, the family -- etc. But this day, she was reading the paper, and wasn't necessarily in an incredibly chatty mood. I tried, really I did, but it's not like I can tie the woman to her dining room chair or anything. Sometimes I also have to do things like, oh, go to the bathroom and pee. So, long story short, this 92-year-old woman did her best to hover over Daisy here and there anyway.

"It's okay, I'm not gonna hit her or anything," she would tell me. "You don't have to break us up."

I found this absolutely hilarious, because I find grandma hilarious anyway. She is absolutely one of the most interesting members of the family, and man am I gonna mourn this woman when she eventually goes. Her late husband was kind and soft-spoken with me, gentle in age and wisdom...but grandma is a firecracker when she is feeling it and spending time with her is an absolute joy. And surprisingly, she really likes me when she is not a huge fan of most people and doesn't tend to get close with most of the in-laws. However, she'll (usually) talk up a storm with me for hours.

Mama is stunned by this, by the way.

So, eventually, dinner was finished -- I helped where I could, and when Daisy would let me, but I was essentially banned from the kitchen as well; this is nothing new, as Daisy will tell me "get out of my kitchen" even at home. 

And then grandma brought out the pie.

Look, all -- I have gone on record stating that I am not a pie person, I am a cake person. It's a controversial stance within the family, much like me being a fan of the Montreal Canadiens instead of the Toronto Maple Leafs. But, grandma's apple pie -- as stereotypical as it may sound -- was amazing. I have gone on record multiple times since this day in saying it's the best apple pie I've ever had, and may be the best pie I've ever had in my life period. Yes, I know that is a bold statement. 

After dinner, everything wound down slowly. Dishes were done, the laundry I had been doing downstairs was dried, folded, and brought back up to be put in the back of the Bronco, and we had some quiet time with grandma watching the news before we eventually headed back down the hill to the hotel.

We had but two days left in and around the family homestead, and they were also to be filled with more, exciting things to do.