TheMondayGarden.com

Amazingly, worldwide, all of humanity depend today on under 100 plants for food and almost none of the major food crops originated in temperate North America. The Pre-Colombians in this region worked hard to get enough to eat and often lived along coastlines for the seafood. It would have been very difficult without the squash, beans and maize whose seeds had been imported from Central America.

Produce that could have been served that first Thanksgiving include:

Fruit: crabapple, wild grape, beach plum (no apples, mangos, peaches, pears, grapes, citrus, melons or bananas).

Berries: cranberry, blueberry, elderberry, wild strawberry, blackberry (no cherries, junipers, raspberries or olives)

Nuts: hickory, hazelnut, chestnut, black walnut, pecan, acorn (no walnuts, almonds, pistachios or peanuts)

Roots: Jerusalem artichokes, cattail (no potatoes, carrots, turnips, beets or onions)

Seeds: wild rice, sunflower (no wheat, rye, oats, millet, barley, soy, broad-beans, peas, chickpeas or rice)

Other: seasonal greens, culinary and medicinal herbs, mushrooms (no okra, lettuce, kale, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, spinach, celery, peppers or cucumbers)

Sweets: maple syrup (no sugar cane or honey)

Southern imports: summer and winter squash, pumpkins, maize, kidney-type beans (navy, kidney, pinto, yellow-eyed, great northern), string beans

Active humans of the time needed 2 or 3 times more calories than we do. Yet, the available produce was labor intensive to harvest; there were few high-carb plant foods; and the game and fish were mostly low fat. Maple sugar, then, like the Southern imports, must have been a treasure beyond measure.

Meanwhile, the Pre-Colombian Meso-Americans had the fabled “fountain of youth” (now called “antioxidants”). Depending on the region, they ate: tomatoes, sweet onions, papayas, pineapples, avocados, cashews, brazil nuts, maize, quinoa, lima beans, peanuts, kidney-type beans, string beans, vanilla, cocoa, chile pepper, summer and winter squash, pumpkins, manioc, white potato, sweet potato, and American wild bee honey. True gold.

Here's the sugar maple in flower in the spring:



in leaf in the summer:



bare branched in the winter:

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And here’s what the readers said :

Thank you very much. I really appreciate your meditation. I wish you a good Thanksgiving. Bill (CO)

Talking about trees, when we were driving to your place this weekend we saw a great big willow tree with its leaves half green and half yellow, wildly flouncing about in the heavy winds like a whirling dervish. It was quite a sight. Kal and Roger (NY)

gorgeous maple. Glad you got the photo before the nor'easter came through. Mine are almost bare. That's a very informative and interesting bit you wrote on pre Colombian diet in these parts. Many thanks. Happy Thanksgiving for the harvest, Barbara (NY)

that was so interesting! What conclusions can we draw? Could it be that the central Americans were focused more on just living, whilst the north Americans were focused on "earning" their living -- i.e., hunting, fishing, gathering, planting, whatever? Liz (CT)

This is gorgeous, it takes me back to summer memories at the park with the family. Carlos (NY)

No pickles? Forget it. Otherwise a noble research effort. Toma (OH)

Absolutely Lovely!!! Santiago (NJ)