Thankful Canadians

In my homeland of Canadia, today is Thanksgiving. Or yesterday, depending on which day you chose to celebrate and be thankful. If you're Canadian. So a happy day to you, either way! Before I talk about that, though, I just wanted to send out special thanks to the official Meatless Monday people in NYC, who have posted Stella's artwork (from last week's post) on all their social media sites, including instagram and tumblr, to provide a couple of examples. Very proud of our girl. :)

We have had a great weekend celebrating with family. On Saturday, we celebrated "International Observe the Moon Night" at a public open house at the Cronyn Observatory at Western University. Although patchy clouds swam in and out of the viewfinder, we all enjoyed startling, clear, up-close-and-personal looks at the surface of our only natural satellite. Downstairs, there was a great demo for kids on how the craters were formed. It was a lot of fun and not at all related to MM. Sorry to digress.

Yesterday, we drove out to Cedar Row Farm Sanctuary, which is near Stratford, Ontario, for their "Celebrating Life - Mini Open House" event. We met several turkeys, including Tilley, Zebra and Dusty Miller, who took a liking to Stella's colourful rubber boots and chased her around the yard. We felt thankful for the wonderful people at Cedar Row, who give shelter to farm animals who have suffered from abuse or neglect.

Today we are going to a matinee movie and enjoying some leftovers. Woo-hoo! This week's recipe is an old favourite of many family gatherings, which one-time reader M.J. of London, Ontario (with additional input from loyal reader E.D., lately of Charlottetown, PEI) was prevailed upon to share with us. But we made another dish for Sunday, as we had two family gatherings this weekend. This recipe, if you're looking for an alternative, can be found here. Either one would make a delicious side dish.

On this holiday Monday, some Canadians might be recovering from too much celebrating and thus be glad of some lighter, meat-free fare today. Or you may be gearing up for another, or your first such holiday dinner tonight. And if your family tradition or host's plans mean you'll be having turkey or other meaty meals on this MM, just remember that tomorrow is another day which would do just as well to be meatless. The key piece is "once a week, cut the meat," not that the day has to begin with the letter "M," as in mnemonic. Let's always think of this as an easy, positive thing we do and never stress about it.

Cheers,

Mark