It's a long time since I roasted a pumpkin or pumpkin seeds. Matt and I are invited to a waif-and-stray dinner tomorrow (for people who have no family or any place to go) in the building and I'm taking pumpkin soup; Matt is taking chips. I bought a darling little pumpkin, so cute I wanted to keep it for decoration, but it will achieve immortality in another form, that is, if it's any good.

To begin, of course, I had to make chicken stock. You can't buy boiling fowl any more, at least not where I live in Toronto, so I went to a No Frills and bought a bag of chicken legs and backs, for a good rich stock. I separated and washed the pumpkin seeds and roasted them with a bit of salt (too much, I fear); I'll use them in salad. I also roasted the pumpkin- in keeping with the popular trend now of roasting rather than boiling vegetables. I have a mulching machine - what do you call it? - a long-handled motorized blade that purées vegetables for soup and sauce; a neighbour gave it to me when I started giving her invalid husband home-made soup every week. The mixture is cooling now and I have to decide whether to spike it with Siracha (sp?) or go bland and traditional with cinnamon. We'll see. I've tried a sample of each and I'm still not sure.

Well, Memories of Thanksgivings Past. They all blend into your memory bank, don't they? I think of Thornton Wilders' play The Long Christmas Dinner, a one-act play written/produced in 1931 presenting 90 years in one family, the Bayards; and of A.R. Gurney's play, The Dining Room (1982), 18 scenes from different families, with the dining furniture their common bond, a set made in 1898, and representing, to Gurney, the decline of the upper middle class, WASPS and tradition.

That's what Thanksgiving is still all about: tradition. Even this weekend, without a family to share it with this year, Matt and I will honour tradition and be thankful for our blessings.

We Wish you a happy Thanksgiving.