Tag Archives: culture

Have you heard of Black Friday? It’s another name for the day after Thanksgiving. But why is it called Black Friday?

Thanksgiving is a busy week! You may or may not work on Monday and Tuesday. You cook or travel on Wednesday, you eat on Thursday. After such a busy week, you usually do one of two things on Friday: sleep or shop.

On Friday, everyone is either too tired from eating all that food that they take it easy or, if they have any energy left, they join more hordes of people to go shopping and take advantage of Black Friday sales. It’s called Black Friday because so many people start their Christmas shopping on this day that retail stores traditionally go from being in the red to being in the black, financially.

There are plenty of good sales on this day to encourage everyone to shop, and to continue shopping throughout the holiday weekend! Some people get up ridiculously early and wait outside big shopping malls at 5 or 6am to get the early bird deals. Some people have actually been killed in the stampede!

Interested in more expressions and posts about Thanksgiving? See Thanksgiving part 1 and part 2.

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The countdown has begun! Less than two weeks until Thanksgiving!

So how big of a deal is Thanksgiving actually?

When you ask if something is “a big deal” you want to know if it’s important.

Since it always falls on a Thursday, schools always give Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday off. Thanksgiving is the only actual “holiday” but many adults also take off Wednesday and Friday, or at least Friday. Wednesday is usually necessary because great hordes of people travel to see their relatives on Wednesday, and since lots of families live quite far apart in the US, that’s a very busy day for the airlines.

In fact, the Thanksgiving weekend is the busiest travel period of the year. So Thanksgiving is a pretty big deal!

Thanksgiving is more like a holiday week, since you can imagine that not much gets accomplished on Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday is a pretty busy day for those not travelling as they have to start preparing the huge meal on Thursday!

Speaking of food…

As we saw last week, food takes center stage at Thanksgiving. One of the most traditional foods for the Fall and Thanksgiving is pumpkin pie, so this week I decided to share a traditional pumpkin pie recipe! Fresh pumpkin pie is creamy and delicious and best served with whipped cream. Enjoy!

Pumpkin Pie

For the crust:

250g walnuts

2 tablespoons butter

Puree the walnuts and butter together in a food processor. Spread and pack into the bottom of a pie pan using your fingers. Bake for about 10 minutes at 175 C (I’m not really sure if this is necessary!) Easy peasy!

For the Filling:

3 cups pumpkin puree (roast a pumpkin or two in the oven, scrape out the flesh and puree)

1 cup sugar (metric: 200 grams)

1.5 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground cloves

1 teaspoon ground allspice (piment)

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon salt (optional)

4 large eggs

1.5 cans (12oz each) of evaporated milk (koffiemelk in the Netherlands ~500 ml, but you can also use coconut milk, soy milk, or whipped cream, whatever you want, really!)

Mix everything together in a large bowl and bake at 210 C  for the first 15 minutes, then turn the temperature down to 175 C and bake another 45 to 60 minutes, until a clean knife inserted into the center comes out clean.

This is what the finished product looks like:

The filling recipe originally comes from this fabulous site.

Interested in more posts about Thanksgiving? See Thanksgiving part 1.

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