VOA标准英语2009-Thanksgiving Features Native American Foods

Many of the traditional foods eaten at Thanksgiving dinner have Native American roots but have been spiced up

Jeff Swicord | Washington 24 November 2009

 
Thanksgiving holiday has its origins in the early 17th century when European settlers shared a meal of thanks with Native Americans after a successful fall harvest

Each year, Americans gather with families and friends on the fourth Thursday of November to celebrate Thanksgiving.   The celebration usually includes a meal of turkey, sweet potatoes, squash¹, cornbread, cranberries², and pumpkin³ pie.  The first Thanksgiving meal in North America is thought to have taken place in 1621 as European settlers gathered with Native Americans to give thanks for a successful fall harvest. Many Americans believe Thanksgiving was created by the early European settlers. 

Executive⁴ Chef Richard Hetzler is an expert on Native American foods.

He's on a team that put together the cafeteria's menu at the Museum of the American Indian in Washington D.C.  The team spent several months researching Native American foods going back centuries.

Their menu features foods from five different regions across the U.S.

We stopped by to talk with him about the role Native Americans played in early Thanksgiving celebrations.

"I think the biggest thing is that it was truly to give thanks.  It was an end of the year food harvest that people used.  They weren't going to be able to eat that well for the rest of the year because you were going into the winter months," Hetzler said.

Today on Thanksgiving, family and friends gather for a traditional turkey dinner.

But the holiday has its origins in the early 17th century when European settlers shared a meal of thanks with Native Americans after a successful fall harvest.

Although Thanksgiving is not a Native American holiday, Chef Hetzler points out that Native Americans taught the European settlers how to trap, gather, and preserve the food that allowed them to survive in North America.  Many historians⁵ believe the settlers would not have survived those early years without help from Native Americans.

"I think my take on Thanksgiving is it was Native Americans that brought together a bounty⁶ of feast⁷ for everybody to have," Hetzler explains. "And they would use the items that they would have had available to them."

Hetzler says a wide array⁸ of Native American foods would have been present at the first Thanksgiving. "This is our Three Sister Salad. It has everything they would have had, the beans, the corn, the squash.  I would imagine that that would have been on the table.  The turkey definitely would have been on the table.  Right now, the corn bread definitely would have been there," he said.

At the Museum of the American Indian, Chef Hetzler has tried to take the bland⁹ ingredients in Native American foods and adapt them to the modern palate. "The original corn bread recipes that we could find were very dense¹⁰.  There is really no leavening¹¹ in them," he said. "And essentially¹², I mean it made sense for what Native Americans did, they needed to take food and pack it with them."

Hetzler says one of the most important things settlers learned from Native Americans was how to preserve vegetables and meats so they would last through the winter.

"A lot of those vegetables could have been dried out.  So they would have cut them and laid them out in the sun.  And then they would have reconstituted them in soups and things of that nature.  So they were very good at preserving.  They also did a lot with salt," he added. "They were one of the first people to use salt to actually cure, cook, and preserve food."

But the friendship between the settlers and the Native Americans did not last long.  Eventually, European settlers drove the Native Americans off their lands.  And the settlers lost touch with many Native American foods... except on Thanksgiving.

1 squash   

n.壁球，摺皱不堪，拥挤嘈杂的人群，浓缩果汁，美国南瓜；vt.压扁，压制；vi.变扁，压榨

参考例句：

• He is drinking lemon squash.他正在喝柠檬露。
• She sprained her ankle playing squash.她在打软式墙网球时扭伤了脚踝。

2 cranberries   

n.越橘( cranberry的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The tart flavour of the cranberries adds piquancy. 越橘的酸味很可口。
• Look at the fresh cranberries. 你看这些新鲜的蔓越橘。 来自无师自通 校园英语会话

3 pumpkin   

n.南瓜

参考例句：

• They ate turkey and pumpkin pie.他们吃了火鸡和南瓜馅饼。
• It looks like there is a person looking out of the pumpkin!看起来就像南瓜里有人在看着你！

4 executive   

adj.执行的，行政的；n.执行者，行政官，经理

参考例句：

• A good executive usually gets on well with people.一个好的高级管理人员通常与人们相处得很好。
• He is a man of great executive ability.他是个具有极高管理能力的人。

5 historians   

n.历史学家，史学工作者( historian的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Historians seem to have confused the chronology of these events. 历史学家好像把这些事件发生的年代顺序搞混了。
• Historians have concurred with each other in this view. 历史学家在这个观点上已取得一致意见。

6 bounty   

n.慷慨的赠予物，奖金；慷慨，大方；施与

参考例句：

• He is famous for his bounty to the poor.他因对穷人慷慨相助而出名。
• We received a bounty from the government.我们收到政府给予的一笔补助金。

7 feast   

n.盛宴，筵席，节日

参考例句：

• After the feast she spent a week dieting to salve her conscience.大吃了一顿之后，她花了一周时间节食以安慰自己。
• You shouldn't have troubled yourself to prepare such a feast!你不该准备这样丰盛的饭菜，这样太麻烦你了！

8 array   

n.展示，排列，盛装；vt.排列，打扮

参考例句：

• He was unable to escape the array of facts.他无法躲避一连串的事实。
• She puts on her finest array.她穿上最漂亮的衣服。

9 bland   

adj.淡而无味的，温和的，无刺激性的

参考例句：

• He eats bland food because of his stomach trouble.他因胃病而吃清淡的食物。
• This soup is too bland for me.这汤我喝起来偏淡。

10 dense   

a.密集的，稠密的，浓密的；密度大的

参考例句：

• The general ambushed his troops in the dense woods. 将军把部队埋伏在浓密的树林里。
• The path was completely covered by the dense foliage. 小路被树叶厚厚地盖了一层。

11 leavening   

n.酵母，发酵，发酵物v.使（面团）发酵( leaven的现在分词 )；在…中掺入改变的因素

参考例句：

• Shall we make cakes with this leavening dough tonight? 晚上我们用这块酵子烙饼吃吧。 来自互联网
• His sermons benefited from a leavening of humor. 他的布道得益于幽默的影响。 来自互联网

12 essentially   

adv.本质上，实质上，基本上

参考例句：

• Really great men are essentially modest.真正的伟人大都很谦虚。
• She is an essentially selfish person.她本质上是个自私自利的人。