An Unorthodox Thansgiving

Thanksgiving is a time for reconnecting. Food, warm drinks, fir trees, first snows and fufilling that most basic of human needs: companionship. This year, I had the immense pleasure of taking my thanksgiving in new and different way, one that turned out to be a food and love filled weekend to be reckoned with.
I traveled to Vermont- the closest state in the US to Canada-a place where everyone is friendly and aware of their carbon footprint. The Burlington airport is one of the best I have visited, an easy, unselfconcious place where air travel might be considered enjoyable. The friends I was staying with are a variety of poets, artists and writers, all of whom are very well versed in culinary pleasures. We spent the days roaming around, discussing Walt Whitman, listening to Aretha Franklin and most of all EATING. We took our culinary satisfaction in many ways: pecan pie and coffee ice cream, hard little pears, molasses cake, eggnog french toast, thick cappuchinos, thai chicken soup, warm goat cheese and roasted tomato salad, apple cinnamon pancakes and much more. The food we ate was made all the more sweeter by a New England early winter, snow spread across the ground and vast amounts of stars at night, steam filled kitchens and bright morning hikes. It made for a new way to define the holiday, and one that I much prefer to sticky family parties and awkward reunions. All in all, I learned that home has a myrid of meanings, and that most often it is found in a hot pot of coffee and a good friend reading the New Yorker.