1900 vegetarian Thanksgiving

Since recorded history, vegetarians have been around for a long time, going back to the ancient Greeks.  Even we Americans, despite our love of cooked meat hastily put between two buns, have a fondness for the vegetable—or did at one time in the not too distant past.  

I was just looking at a Thanksgiving menu in a Good Housekeeping magazine, 1900.  It was suggested by Mary Foster Snider.  The bill of fare showed the following:

Celery soup          Nut butter sandwiches

          Olives       Salted almonds

     Lentil cutlets with tomato sauce

  Rice croquettes with red currant jelly

Vegetable turkey     Brown gravy     Cranberry jelly

Italian chestnuts (boiled)   Creamed onions

Grape sherbet

Nuttose timbales     Mushroom sauce

Apple and nut salad

Granose biscuit     Almond butter

Pumpkin pudding     Lemon pie

White fruit cake

Pears     Apples     Oranges     Nuts

Coffee

This all looks quite appetizing to me.  And not a speck of meat (well, there might have been milk and an egg or two but that would be no problem today with our substitutes).

For the temperate carnivores among us some foods served at the earliest Thanksgiving were oysters and eels and other kinds of sea foods.  Incidentally, it was Native Americans who introduced the white settlers to their first taste of oysters, not to mention it was the American turkey that won the hearts (I mean stomach) of the European.  Even Charles IX (27 June 1550—30 May 1574) of France served turkey at his wedding banquet!

Comments

[zman]

In addition to my last comment I would like to add that the current name of the game for the young american teens in US
trying to escape the horrid conditions of their parents poverty, is NeuroSky. In a way tomorrows next Google or Intel. NeuroSky has developed a cost effective bio sensor and signal processing system for the consumer market where a game or tool can be controlled by thought power. In a way they offer the young ones semi-siddhi-powers. Very addictive and a ground for an escapism that will outmatch anything mankind have seen till this day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQWBfCg91CU

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeuroSky

We speak of the "food" of tomorrow here. Is it healthy as in strenghtening the concentration abilities of our next generation or will it become another cut in the dying body of a confused nation?

[Ted Bagley]

Mrs, Snider's menu was once made by "peasants" themselves. Hmmmmn. Now "peasants" go to McDonalds where the food is all ready for them made by other peasants. It's more than ironic.

[zman]

In these tough times it is far cheaper for a family to dine at McDonalds or Burger King, then spend money on that "deluxe" menu by dear mrs Snider.

The mere fact that more then 1/3 of the US population is on food stamps with a very grim future ahead of them, clearly makes carefully selected "Buddhist food" something entitled for the rich. Ironic huh?