Title:
Traditional Thanksgiving Meal, With Modern Shortcuts
Description: This is
a VOA Special English Agriculture Report.
See text below
Text:
Thanksgiving Day is America's version of a harvest
festival. The holiday is celebrated on the fourth
Thursday in November. Millions of Americans joined
family and friends to give thanks and eat a meal
with a history that is centuries old. Early European
settlers in North America held other ceremonies
where they gave thanks. But what Americans often
consider the first Thanksgiving took place in
Plymouth Colony. Today we call it Massachusetts.
Those settlers are known as the Pilgrims. They held
a three-day celebration in the fall of sixteen
twenty-one. They celebrated the harvest with members
of a local Indian tribe. The best known food that
Americans traditionally eat on Thanksgiving is
turkey. The nation's turkey producers are expected
to raise two hundred forty-two million birds this
year. The government says that is two percent fewer
than last year. Last year's turkey production had a
value of about three and a half billion
dollars.Thanksgiving turkeys are traditionally
served with a bread mixture that some Americans call
stuffing. Others call it dressing. Side dishes
include cranberries, sweet potatoes and green beans
or other vegetables. The meal traditionally ends
with a dessert of pumpkin pie or pecan pie. Some
Thanksgiving foods have changed over time. For
example, most turkeys these days are bred with
larger breasts to provide more white meat. Corn --
known in much of the world as maize -- has also
changed. It tastes much sweeter than the starchier
corn of the past. The way Americans prepare for
Thanksgiving has also changed. Economist John
Anderson of the American Farm Bureau Federation says
some people look for ways to save time. He says
shortcuts like buying prepared foods for the holiday
are part of a bigger trend in America. Some people
might not have the time or the desire to prepare a
big meal, or the space for a lot of guests. Whatever
the reason, John Anderson notes that more people go
to a restaurant for Thanksgiving dinner than in the
past. Aid groups and religious organizations were
also busy serving Thanksgiving meals to the needy.
The weak economy has increased the number of
Americans receiving government assistance to buy
food. For VOA Special English I'm Alex Villarreal.
Our programs are online with transcripts and MP3
files at voaspecialenglish.com. And you can find us
on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube at VOA Learning
English.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
