BUILD A LIFE YOU DON'T NEED A VACATION FROM . . . 

This week's words of wisdom bring one specific person to mind: GINA. We've been friends from afar, worked together, and told stories about her over the years. Her journey often seems to intersect with ours, and when we think about the impact of GFJ and what it means to us, we are often reminded of the steps she is taking.

Over the years, that journey has taken her from college to full-time work to leaving her comfortable design job and navigating her way in the freelance / entrepreneurial food world. Now, Gina is slowly making her way from her old home in Portland, OR to her new home in Copenhagen, Denmark, and has used the time to soak up stateside food culture so that she can take a taste of home with her. Along the way, she's been continually surprised and delighted.

Over the next few weeks, we'll include snippets of Gina's adventures in this newsletter. We know 'the holidays' get super busy, but we always believe that the best part about them is when people connect around shared food experiences. So please pull up to our digital dinner table: we're excited to share these few moments each week with you during an otherwise overwhelming season.

Gina Lorubbio, creator of American Heirloom Project and maker of Heirloom Mail, spent the past two months savoring and observing and sinking deeply into US food traditions on a cross-country road trip. This series highlights the traditions she had the privilege of experiencing on this trip and prompts you with tangible ways to revive, reflect, and start food traditions of your own. Gina writes:
 

Traditional dishes seem to naturally reflect what’s being pulled from the ground and the branches at Thanksgiving. It’s no coincidence. The day commemorates a temporary moment of peace between European colonists and Native American people, and our modern manner of celebration is rooted in the European festival called Harvest Home that grew to incorporate Native foods.

A few hours south of Montgomery, Alabama, I finally learned why pecan pie is so often on the dessert table.

On our drive up the highway, we saw a sign for Harper Orchards pecans. Then another. And another. Of course, we had to stop. We followed arrows into a thick, drizzly forest and arrived at the quaint storefront. As we’d soon learn, this section of Alabama gets over 70 inches of rain per year, and pecans love it.

We walked in and were greeted in that warm, Southern way by Julie Harper, who married into the family business. She took time between taking orders for 10, 20, and even 30 pounds of pecans to answer my very important question: How does one properly pronounce “pecan”?

She lit right up, and walked over to a poster to demonstrate. The top of the poster showed a row of port-a-potties. “These are pee cans,” it reads, and, then underneath, on top of a photo of pecans, “These are not.” Julie proclaims, “In the South, we say ‘peh-kahn.’”

Because nuts have such a long shelf life, I spend little time pondering when they’re actually picked. But there’s a reason why we make pecan pie for Thanksgiving: November is the height of their harvest.

What a glorious way to celebrate a fresh pull of pecans: mixing them with sweet syrup, pouring them into a buttery shell, and baking until they’re a deep, caramelized brown. Julie recommends, depending on your audience of eaters, adding a jigger of bourbon to the treat.

On our way out, Julie handed us a satsuma, an orange citrus fruit, which is also ready for harvest at this time of year. Coincidentally, we passed Satsuma, Alabama on our highway drive and saw many trees heavy with the fruit. Perhaps many a Thanksgiving table features these jewels, too.

What traditional Thanksgiving dishes celebrate the harvest of your locale?

Happy Thanksgiving,

Taylor + Dorothy + GINA
Co-Founders, Good Food Jobs
Creator of American Heirloom Project + Maker of Heirloom Mail