Are you frantically searching for last minute ideas to put on the table for Thanksgiving Day? The following is something I’ve thrown together for years and we enjoy it at whatever meal it’s served. It’s easy, healthful, and tastes great. Enjoy!
Strawberry Walnut Salad
Cut up 2 lbs cored strawberries (just remove the green tops with a cheap vegetable peeler)
Sprinkle with a little sugar
Add chopped walnuts (Honestly, I never measure – just add until it looks appealing to you, maybe 1 c.; you’d rather have too few than too many, though.)
When we think of your creation, not just the stars twinkling in the night’s sky or the sun flashing its brightness, but the vast heavens and planets and nebula and very possibly things of which we are unaware, we’re stunned by your power.
When we examine the intricacies of a single flower, the beauty of its design, the efficiency of photosynthesis, the blessing of its tiny breath; and multiply that by untold numbers of color and shape and scent; expanding that to plant and sea and animal life alike: multitudes of funny bugs and beings, both adorable and fierce; the minute detail of your artistry amazes us and the expansiveness of your work confounds us. Millions of years haven’t revealed to man the completeness of your creation.
When we think of You, your power and perfection, we must admit here and now that the smallness of man compared with the greatness of God – our smallness to your greatness – makes it improbable that You would extend your immense love to us. Yet You do in so many ways, so very many ways. It makes us relieved and delighted that You not only provide sustenance, but give numerous and varied attentions to our lives. You are interested in us. You want our company. You answer prayer. Oh thank you for that. Thank you for being a kind and generous and loving God.
Thanksgiving dinners provide a backdrop for all that is gracious and good and homey and, in most homes, familiar. Let’s take, for instance, pumpkin pie.
Or in the words of comedians everywhere, please, take mine. I have never loved pumpkin pie. I have never even liked pumpkin pie, though I discovered during a visit to Indiana that I liked the pumpkin pie a childhood friend made that included cream cheese. Cream cheese is my idea of a great addition to nearly any recipe, and so, in an effort to join the ranks of those who love this Thanksgiving staple, I volunteered to make it one year.
That was a mistake. I used the recipe from my friend for what I recall was a chiffon pumpkin pie. It tasted great! The uproar it caused among one or two at the Thanksgiving table (the good humored ribbing only slightly covered what I discerned was a personal horror at the perversion of the beloved pie), however, convinced me that for the satisfaction of all that is traditional, some things are better left unaltered.
So if you love pumpkin pie, you can have my slice. I’ll bring a cheesecake.
It’s happening. The Sunday paper is heavier with every week closer to Christmas. If you’re not careful, those flyers and advertisements will spill onto the floor before you can even reach your reading chair. And so, to give us a little break from what surely are lovely and alluring advertising spreads, I offer a quote from Robinson Crusoe:
“All our discontents about what we want appeared to me to spring from the want of thankfulness for what we have.”
Oh, Daniel Defoe, thank you for the wisdom of that one sentence.
Defoe, Daniel. Robinson Crusoe. (originally published in 1719), New York: Bantam Books, 1981.
When we moved into our home twenty years ago, we were tickled there were three walnut trees on the property. We didn’t know much then.
Two walnut trees grew close together, like inseparable friends, in our front yard. One was in the back, perfect for shading the deck and eventually holding a tree house with a rope ladder, a fortress (I use the term loosely here) my husband built one year as a birthday present for our son. Our son never posted a “No Girls Allowed” sign, since he had three older sisters who used it nearly as much as he did and who would have ignored the sign anyway. He should’ve posted a “No Squirrels Allowed” sign, but that would have been ignored, too.
The kids had great fun with those walnuts that started dropping mid-summer. They gathered them in little sand buckets, or mixed them with leaves for “recipes”, or pretended they were some kind of treasure, or, on their humanitarian-minded days, even medicine.
I even got in on the action. Did I say we didn’t know much then? Because I think it’s important you remember that. I peeled the green outer coat of a great pile of walnuts one year – free food, right? The brown stain left on my hands lasted a good, long time. The taste of the walnuts – by the way, they are black walnut trees – is what some might generously call tangy and what I call bitter.
I have become an avid gardener. I’m not any good at it, but I like doing something in which I can feel productive and let my mind wander at the same time. I discovered our walnut trees don’t like my efforts. They don’t come right out and say it to my face. They simply kill anything planted nearby, including the lovely little hollyhocks I had envisioned happily lining our picket fence; many, many lovely little hollyhocks planted over the years. Those trees don’t back down. Our apple tree didn’t escape. It bravely and, in its final years, desperately tried to hang on despite it’s close proximity to what by now I knew was one of the very selfish walnut trees. Selfish with one exception: For years our yard has been a regular convention center for squirrels from all over.
I suppose I should have some sympathy. The front yard tree suffers from what happened to its friend, though I’ve told it on more than one occasion to suck it up and move on. One summer we came home to a sight. Well, let me back up for the sake of context and to give me an excuse for my lack of sympathy. Everyone loaded into the car for our trip back from the family cabin and we immediately learned that something was wrong with the muffler. We traveled those four hours unable to speak to one another or to find rest in the peaceful scenery flying by, never mind to sleep due to the incredibly loud engine noise. We arrived home, ears ringing, to find water in the basement due to what must have been quite a storm while we were gone. And, yes, one of the friends had fallen. It was quite a sight. I did not grieve over the fallen comrade. And then there were two.
I know more now than I did twenty years ago. I just nod my head when people remark about the lovely golden leaves those trees show every fall. They hold on to them quite late. This year they dropped the night of the first snow. ALL AT ONCE.
Actually, there are steps leading from our deck down to the yard.
I painted a checkerboard onto our picnic table. We have rocks painted red and rocks painted black for the game pieces. I’m beginning to think the tree doesn’t like our games.
Sigh
At least the squirrels are happy. I suspect they plan to overwinter here while planning the next convention.
On a November day when the kids were younger, I took a white sheet (not having the financial resources to actually buy something), put it on a table, and asked my family to write things for which they were grateful on it. Recorded for all of history is someone’s developing handwriting naming a book, the Bible, which they rightly printed in all capital letters; another’s artistic propensity showing their appreciation for strawberries and snow and ice cream; and someone else’s intense love of sleepovers. With cousins!
I wrote each family member’s name on that white sheet whether or not they were able to make the trip for Thanksgiving dinner with the clan that year. Then it went the way of decent ideas everywhere and lay forgotten at the bottom of a stack of tablecloths and table runners and rugs.
I pulled it out this year and there in colorful marker were the names of two dear pets who lived good long lives and one precious brother who died too soon. I stood there thinking about the years in between the year of the sheet used for a tablecloth and this year and the lump in my throat resisted my efforts to look on the bright side. There is a bright side, but there are moments when other things need to be front and center.
So be thankful. Just – be thankful. Be grateful for the common, everyday things that surround you and irritate you and make you late and remind you of something but you can’t quite recall what and bring a smile to your face or voice and fill up your days. Be grateful for things that make life easier and for hard things that make you better. Be grateful for the pet you love who provides company and silliness and no judgment. Be grateful for the people you think will always be there because they have always been there, because it takes no more time to be grateful than it takes to read this, and when you least expect it that time will be gone.
It’s been four years since. I’ve met some people from town, but mostly prefer the solitude of this place. The vastness of the grounds does something to you; something forgiving, maybe. The quietness feeds you.
I found it finally; pulled it out of a very twisting, very dark, very wet cave underneath a small waterfall. I dragged it home, the birds and their progeny following me hoping for some fresh berries in the rookery I had built up for them.
I turned on every light in my vast house, made a celebratory cup of tea, scratched my ankle vigorously, and opened the trunk at last.
I’ve been reading its contents for days now; love letters written over many years from a man to his wife; flirtatious notes, long letters of yearning, crisp pieces of ordinary detail, always signed the same way: “Undying love”. Treasure indeed.
I returned to the little town later and stayed in the same “cheap motel” as it had been so kindly described by what I was now referring to in my thoughts as “my stranger”. I had taken odd jobs here and there, long enough to save money enough to pull up roots and wander again. I had felt unsettled, admitting now that I had felt that way since I was a teenager, and, as inexplicable as it seemed, this was the one place I had lost that unsettled feeling one evening turned to night about one year ago. I picked up the paper in the tiny lobby as I sat down to eat my continental breakfast. As I turned a page, a small obituary stopped my hand, leaving my next bite untaken. It was she, no doubt: the dry, black hair; the harsh, definitive profile; the eyes the color of a turbulent sea.
I felt a hand on my shoulder, and looked up. An overweight man in a black silk suit asked my name and sat across from me.
“Ah. I see you’ve been reading the death announcement. She became very ill a few months ago, called my office and asked that I find you and give you this.”
It was a copy of her will.
“She wrote it in my presence. It’s all legal.”
I scanned the type.
“Everything?” I asked, stupefied, unsure what I would do with worn, clompy brown shoes.
“She had no one. Not after her husband died. Here are the keys to the house. It’s the stone one on the hill. I’m sure you noticed it as you entered town.”
“I only recall a . . . what looked like a large . . . house.” I gave up trying to describe what I had seen.
He nodded. “Moved in as a young couple. Crazy in love, those two. He was away on business when he was hit by a little Honda. She wished she’d died with him. Never got over it.”
Upon those words, I was immediately transported back to the day when, as a careless teenager, driving much faster than the limit, I had killed a man. I felt the blood drain from my face.
He shook his head and then roused himself. “A very large estate indeed. That’s the one.”
He fished out another set of keys.
“Here,” he said handing them to me. “The keys to her cars. The Mercedes is parked in front,” he nodded out the window. “You might call the salvage yard to pick up that piece of junk,” he chuckled as he pointed to my Honda, the only car I had ever owned.
As he rose to leave, I called, “Wait! I . . . I don’t know what to do.”
“Why don’t you go home?” he laughed as he walked out the door.
I found it the moment I entered the house. A note lay on a table in the large entryway of the mansion. It said simply, “Do you wish to play a game?” Then I heard a familiar shriek.
Looking at the birds that crowded around the box, she said, “So now you come! Now when I’ve done all the work!”
One of the birds pecked at her shoe.
I’ve nothing more left. Thank you for your help in finding it, but it’s all gone now.” She shooed them with her hands. “Go on. All gone.”
They squawked loudly, and she raised her voice over theirs, “The lady that came with me. She might have something for you.”
I suppose there are worse things than being found when you wish to hide, but I can’t think of many.
I shivered for a moment, enough to give myself away. They all looked my direction. I suppose there are worse things than being discovered when you wish to hide, but I can’t think of many. I crawled out from my place under the bush and took a few steps.
“The box,” I said, rather crossly. “What’s in it that you come so far from town, at night, with these, these . . .” I interrupted myself long enough to scratch my ankle furiously.
“Birds,” she finished calmly. “It’s a treasure I’ve been hunting for – oh, so many years I’ve lost count now. My husband buried it after a fight we had – years ago. He died not long after, but had left a note in his will telling me of some little birds he’d trained to show me where the treasure was. He always did love gamesmanship.”
“You’ve been hunting a treasure.”
She nodded.
“The birds led you to the treasure?”
“They led me to this little spot. I had to figure out for myself where exactly it was.”
She paused. “It took awhile,” she concluded.
I pointed to the chest. “I don’t suppose there’s anything there for me.”
“Not in this lifetime,” she said without malice, to my dismay.
“What do you think I can give those shrieking things?”
“I always gave them little pieces of meat. And berries. They seem to like berries.”
“Berries!”
What kind of mundane, insane conversation was I having with a stranger in the middle of the night? I began to walk. Then I ran. I must get to some place normal; a place that carried familiar scenes and scents; a place where people and birds said and did what they were supposed to say and do. I left town that same night.
She was fast and seemed to know the terrain well. I was neither, and fell farther and farther behind. It was luck alone, although I think she would have disagreed, that brought me up short when I tripped over her as she squatted near the ground. She was peering in the dark for some small landmark, some indication she was near whatever it was that she sought. She motioned silence, and I acquiesced, too out of breath for words anyway. She straightened and we had taken only a few steps when I felt the very earth give way below me and I fell smack onto a pebbly, hardened space a good twelve feet beneath the surface. I rolled to a sitting position, moaned, and saw that she was climbing down some mismatched boards nailed into the side of what appeared to be a cave wall.
I began to groan. It was not involuntary, I’ll acknowledge, but I thought by this time I deserved to whine. However, the instant a sound escaped my throat, she held up her hand to silence me and walked into a short tunnel. I found her scraping away some dirt from the wall with a little tool. It was apparent that she knew this place. The earth was packed solid, and she seemed to know exactly what she was doing though it was very dark despite the flashlight she had flicked on upon our descent. I tried to while away the minutes by chatting with her, but getting no response, I went back through the tunnel. I’d had enough. She could have the silence she seemed to crave for company. I climbed the “ladder” to the ground overhead, peeped out, recoiled at the black night, looked down again at the darkness beneath me, then, gathering my courage, swung my leg up and pulled myself out. I started off unsteadily, uncertain of my direction. The moon shone only dimly, and there was no trampled path, no recognizable landmark, no inner sense of direction.
I had walked for a few minutes when I heard a rustling. Scared out of my wits, I searched in vain for the hole I now wished I had never left and then ran into a bush under which I promptly sat as far as I could manage. There appeared, not too far distant, a large bird with black feathers and no markings.
“Black feathers,” I silently scolded myself, “Of course its feathers are black! The whole world is black in this darkness!”
It stood waiting; looking around excitedly like some kid at the first football game of the season. It didn’t wait long. Four birds of similar size joined it. They immediately raised such a scream as I’ve never heard since. The sound inhabits my dreams still on nights when the dark seems to close in so near that I can touch it.
I heard a scrambling and saw the stranger throw a wooden box the size of a small trunk out first, then hoist herself outside.
