The second Monday of October has been designated (since 1957) as the day Canada officially celebrates and gives thanks for the annual harvest. Although it has been recognized as an annual holiday since 1879, there wasn’t an official date to celebrate before then and sometimes it was celebrated in November instead of October. I don’t know if we ever shared the same date as American Thanksgiving however we did adopt their customs of making the meal centre around turkey, pumpkin pie, and squash!
This year’s Thanksgiving was even more special to me because it included some food that I had grown or harvested myself (which I am truly thankful for!) AND because it included a special cranberry relish made by my challenge co-host, Donna. Donna and Richard were able to join us at my daughter’s house for this special meal (another in the long list of things I am thankful for!)
Kabocha squash (aka buttercup; aka Japanese pumpkin) is hands-down my favourite squash. This was my first year attempting to grow it and for some reason I had it in my mind that it was difficult to grow, or maybe that it couldn’t be grown in my climate. I’d only even seen imported kabochas in the grocery store and never seen it at farmers’ markets either so I had incorrectly surmised this. Thankfully I found some seed and took a chance, anyways! The plants ended up almost taking over my garden, like some kind of alien life force 🤣.
Another item featured in our harvest celebration was the blackberry! We had as a family gone blackberry picking on several occasions in August, and some of this hard-earned bounty ended up being featured in a trifle.
And here are some shots of the harvest feast:
Bonus content: Last month there was some fun discussion in the Comments about my drawer of shame. I thought I would include a photo, so you have a visual…
That’s it for me for this month. As always, please join in the fun in the Comments section and/or join the Link Party.
And please check out Donna’s blog, where she “goes bananas”!
Feeling thankful for all my readers and contributors to this challenge…💕🙏💕
Rock on,
The WB