Sybil Bruncheon’s THANKSGIVING HOSTESS "DOs & DON'Ts!!!" .......

....... Ladies! If your husband has invited over his boss and the wife.... or maybe some fussy in-laws, it's YOUR job to select a cuisine that covers everybody's dietary needs and whims! Is Aunt Cornelia on the left a fruitarian?....Maybe a "Boston Bananas Foster" is her idea of a main course! And what about nice Mr. Hekoki there in the middle from the office? He might want to have an "Eastern" influence for his Thanksgiving.... maybe wild rice stuffing with daikon radish shavings and tofu! ... with tonkatsu sweet potatoes!! And isn't that Uncle Herb on the right? Is he a football-all-day-with-a-drumstick type??...Well what could please a true meat-eater more than a Toledo-sized "turducken". Ask your local butcher for the jumbo portion of that new-fangled Holiday entree.....perhaps he has special chicken, duck, and turkey specimens from Chernobyl or Three Mile Island!...or even Fukushima!!! ...and remember that many guests may be lactose intolerant (no cheeses or ice cream!), or even vegans (no cheeses, ice cream, deviled eggs, or honey!!) ...whatever the case, it's up to you as the hostess to make everyone at your Thanksgiving table feel welcome...and grateful! You'll have every one of your Pilgrims yelling "Yay!"..and "YUM!"...and “私にもっとサツマイモをくれ!!!”…

Sybil Bruncheon’s “Our Thanksgiving Heritage:... The Early Years!!...

.... Yes, Friends, although we associate Thanksgiving with our own fun-loving pilgrims from the 1600s, in fact other civilizations had their own earlier versions of "Thanksgiving". Did you know that in ancient Egypt, there was a famous tradition of giving thanks in the Fall season for the bounteous harvests granted by the Nile river?... The people prepared their own feasts comprising yam-beetle casseroles with a river-reed bouquet-garni and minced mud-minnow mousse. Also wild asparagus spears with goat butter, Babylonian/Brussels sprouts grilled with baby sparrows wrapped in a flaky papyrus phyllo, delta oyster and clam stuffing inside a turkey buzzard, and relish made from pharaoh berries and citron soaked in natron...(or was it the other way round??) ....and Amenhotep's favorite dish; "Franks in Frankincense"!!...

The main difference between their tradition and ours was that their feast was made for the next life and was displayed for the celebrants in a special case where the dinner was then mummified by holy priests and special ..um... "meal mummifiers". ...oh, and another difference... the lady of the house would actually wear the turkey on her head until it was time for burial!!! The Romans imitated much of what the Egyptians had started, which is probably the origin of what later became Turkey Tetrazzini....Festive, wasn't it?!? 

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OUR THANKSGIVING HERITAGE: ... "the hungry years"......

Hello Friends. It is a little known fact that during the hardest years of the Great Depression, even the White House had to budget...even during Holiday time!! It would not have been politic to have been seen feasting on sumptuous dishes and reveling in the plenty that America had been known for only a few years earlier when much of the country was now dragging through bank collapses, farm foreclosures, and dust bowl droughts. The clever chefs in the White House came up with an alternative. They prepared nutritious and fairly flavorful entrees out of an unlikely source....strange sea-life from the deepest parts of the ocean. Oceanographer William Beebe in the famous Bathysphere designed by Otis Barton dived to a depth of nearly a mile and found the most bizarre and somewhat frightening wild life down in the darkest regions where no sunlight ever reached. Carrying creatures back for the Smithsonian Institute and the National Geographic Society, it was soon determined that these new fish species were edible during a misunderstanding in a museum cafeteria, when rare specimens were mistaken for a grocery delivery to the cooking staff. The cooks were alarmed when they first took the animals from the loading dock, but assumed that the Roosevelts had brought some exotic delicacies back from foreign dignitaries. Sadly, the odd dishes they improvised were immediately valued at nearly $1.5 million dollars when the cost of the deep-sea technology, trial-and-error device testing, military and scientific staff salaries, college and research grants, and special materials and instrumentation manufacture were all tallied. That would make the cost of every forkful of the "roasted turkey" about $5800. Both the White House and the scientific community were mortified....But the public only read in the papers that the First Family were exploring other, more economically responsible Thanksgiving dinner choices during hard times....and after all, Mrs. Roosevelt, after the first few bites declared.... "Why, Franklin!...it tastes just like tuna fish!"

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Sybil Bruncheon’s THANKSGIVINGS!!… ON OTHER WORLDS!!!... care for a bite?

...Hello, Friends! Did you know that on other planets many different civilizations, and even LIFE FORMS have ways of expressing the universal need to say "I Thank You!"??? Yes, you are not alone in sharing the eternal emotion of "gratitude".

...Here, in this interdimensional image chip (known as a "polaroid instamatic" to your kind!), we see a celebration on the planet Zzjr#deetyl*%5... a female Zzjrian is sampling a mandible-ette portion of dzatso-monkey in yellow sauce. Her nice escort is offering it to her with one of his hand-feet. In their world, the feeding of one another is considered the final step before gamete-sharing, but since they are at a cocktail festivity, he wears a special Chastity Helmet to prevent any further intimacy in front of company...or spawn that may be running about. Notice her high sense of fashion. As opposed to doing anything as savage as eating a turkey, on the planet Zzjr#deetyl*%5, a really stylish woman carries an animal as a purse, and inserts a lipstick, a wallet, and various things into its behind-region after thoroughly sedating it. Interestingly, if she cannot afford a purse, she does the same thing to her male-spouse... with or without sedation. Learning about Thanksgivings on other worlds is fun, isn't it? 

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Sybil Bruncheon's "Our Thanksgiving Heritage"... A PRAYER FROM REVEREND SIMPLICITY CARFEATHERS (1620)…

Oh, Merciful Lamb, please let us, on this first Thanksgiving, be grateful for our yam and twig casserole...especially since Thou hath granted us a festive little garnish of pine needles which we will apportion to each and every one of Thine worshipful diners in a portion not greater than one and one half needle-ettes per soul. Also, remindeth us to be glad of heart at the sight of the turnip, radish, and skittle-beetle soufflé which our Indian brethren have prepared with loving and unwashéd hands and left at the back-flap of our tent sometime in the last three days.... And in a hollowed out birch-bark serving dish which we have been told we may keep as a "house-warming" present! We did indeed warm our home by burning it in a hole in the middle of the room. And thank You blesséd Soul of Peace for helping us to extinguish the flames which spreadeth to the canvas by smiting it with sticks as if it were the accurséd hind-quarters of Satan himself (which it very well may have been since Goody Dalrymple says that she smelled infernal farting and saw in the rising smoke the face of a goat with three horns that recited French limericks!). Anyway...we put out the fire, and now have a nice view of the stars at night!

Finally, oh Patient Saviour, we thank Thee for the sight at least of a plump turkey which we would have prepared for our holiday repast had it not pecked out the left eye of Reverend Punctuality Throckmorton during his interminable sermon on "Edibles And Their Free-Will To Embrace Low-Calorie Salvation...OR NOT!"...it was during the declamation and response section of his endless exhortation to "dessert sinlessly" that the turkey lunged at the blesséd Reverend and un-eyed him as it scaped our lean-to prayer-hut! The entire congregation tried to bolster the Pastor's challenged morale by gathering feathers, oak leaves, river mud, and hair-combings to fashion a graven image of a turkey for him to kick and dismember to purge his righteous anger!!

Oh, Serene Guide of our Spirits!... The Reverend in his humble radiance, forgave the facsimile for its transgression against his extremely modest face, and said that one eye still allowed him to see the wonders of our new home here in the new world and would keep him from stubbing his bunion on that damnable tree-stump near the entryway to our settlement as he has done thrice-times this very week when arising in the middle of the night to make his water away from prying eyes and pointing fingers. The mud-and-rubbish turkey now sits in pride-of-place on said tree-stump as a decoration for our feast!! ...and much thanks hath been yowled up to the Heavens along with songs and gourd rattling! We all plan to take our once-yearly bath after the cranberry-cricket flan.... Halleluiah!!!! Halleluiah!!!! OHHHH...HALLELUUUU-IAH!!!!

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OUR THANKSGIVING HERITAGE: ...what a wonderful world...

......Yes, Folks! We have so much to be grateful for on our own planet Earth at Thanksgiving time. Family, friends, and delicious and wholesome food prepared with love and respect for the traditions of our most cherished values; freedom of speech and worship, security in our homes, and patriotism for our wonderful country. ....But did you know that on other planets, many people have to arm themselves and fight their Thanksgiving dinner to the death even before the first can of cranberry sauce is opened??? Let us all truly give Thanks!!! 

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Sybil Bruncheon’s “OUR THANKSGIVING HERITAGE: A Nice Smile Opens Many Doors”...

...Yes, Friends, it's time for another deeply moving tale from Thanksgivings past.... Did you know that when the first pilgrims made their long and arduous journey to the New World they came without all the comforts and niceties that their friends and neighbors still had in Merry Old England! There were no greengrocers, no apotha-- apotha--- apotha--- drug stores, no fragrance counters, nor even dentists! And so the pilgrims were glad to learn from their Native American hosts all sorts of local traditions!...like replacing crumbling teeth with a fine array of kiln dried corn kernels... And they were interchangeable so one could change one's teeth with the latest Fall-fashion color forecasts....although of course basic black goes with everything!!! And oh, how the Indians would smile and point and even laugh with joy at the pilgrims when they first stepped outside with their new smiles in place!! Point and laugh! Point and laugh! Oh, what lovely neighbors they were to the Pilgrims! Hallelujah!

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Sybil Bruncheon’s OUR THANKSGIVING HERITAGE: Joyous, yes... but not TOO joyous!

Yes, Friends, it's time for another deeply moving tale from Thanksgivings past... Here we have Reverend Eloysius Wholesomeness Cruller, pastor of The Fairley-Famished Lamb of Blessedness congregation in Sadley Corners. Known for his fiery sermons that had a strangely calming effect on his parishioners (especially the ones with insomnia, anxiety disorders, or ...um, "demon fidgets"), he was nevertheless given to "visions" and dire predictions concerning oblong vegetables shaped like royal persons, and geese speaking Flemish. Although he was considered eccentric, many locals felt that he had some sort of gift and would heed his advice on sore throat cures, bunions, involuntary mooing, and frizzy hair.

Unmarried until he was in his late forties, he finally met Goody Tolerance Mayhew from a neighboring hamlet, and they were wed in a lovely though somber ceremony overseen by Reverend Punctuality McPhee. The happy celebrants feasted on spoonfuls of dried corn, yarrow roots, day-old goat's milk, and currants (or were they fettle beetles?)... oh, what a thankful occasion it was for everyone present, and earnest prayers, hearty exhortations, and ...yes, tuneful hymns (with actual tunes in them!) were offered up to the leaky rafters. And then Reverend and Goody Cruller withdrew to begin their meditative honeymoon .......after taking their once-a-year bath.

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Sybil Bruncheon’s “Hollywood Halloween”...

Hollywood True Story!!!... yes, friends, it's true! All great film stars start out in "lesser" pictures, sometimes "much lesser" pictures.. Here's a young Bette Davis in THE CREATURE-TRESS OF FROG HOLLOW (1930)... and it was all uphill from there... well, except for the sequels, THEY CALL ME BUG-LADY (1931) and ALL ABOUT EVE-ILL (1932)... (THEN it started to get better...)

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Sybil Bruncheon’s Halloween Shopper Update!!!

Friends! At Halloween time, are you... embarrassed… by your paltry attempts at a really fine costume? When others are showing up in their very festive finery, do you find yourself rifling through the local Goodwill or Salvation Army for a last-minute "clever" idea? Do you run home in tears, searching feverishly through Aunt Tillie's attic trunks, Uncle Bruce's root cellar, or Cousin Margaretta and her "girlfriend's" garage for anything… JUST ANYTHING for the costume ball at the local Shriner's Lodge? Have you even raided your own dust-rag drawer... or yes!... even put an old pair of boxer shorts on your head as a "turban"???

Come now! Be honest! Confession is the first step towards a happier Halloween! Responsible planning months ahead and some household budgeting can give you the financial freedom for a more attractive option. And your shopping experience at reliable and professional Halloween purveyors can be something to look forward to starting in the Spring when most truly stylish people plan their Halloween ensembles. Whether you choose to be frighteningly beautiful or beautifully frightening, let's get the "tragique" out of your Trick or Treat! Dial I-AM-HIDEOUS.....that's 426-443-3687. Call today!… the nice man will tell you how to order!…

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