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(Editor's note: We originally ran this piece in 2006, and Heather has since left Yahoo!, but we felt its message about the holiday was as relevant now as it was then. Please enjoy it and thank you.)
In anticipation of this year's commotion, we had planned to focus our Thanksgiving edition of The Spark on ways to beat holiday stress. But as I sat down to write, I couldn't stop thinking about what's missing this holiday. This will be my 14th Thanksgiving without my mother, who died of cancer when I was 14 years old. The loss caught up with me this year, and I joined a local grief group.
Today, I'm thankful for the strong strangers I met there: a homeless woman mourning the loss of her son while trying to remain together with her husband in a transitional home; a woman who lost her stepfather only three weeks before is finally beginning to grieve for the little brother she'd lost nearly a decade ago; a man who shyly admitted that he sprays his wife's perfume in the bedroom every so often after recently losing her.
Most of us will experience holidays of missing at some point in our lives. While I thank my group for sharing their stories and their strength, I have some colleagues to thank as well. One editor cherishes her Yahoo! Messenger conversations with her husband in Iraq. They turn on their web cams so they can see each other. And their daughter leaves palmprints on the monitor after touching the image of her dad's face. Another editor is afraid he can't carve the turkey like his dad used to. But as he shares his father's Thanksgiving traditions with his young daughters, he is sure they will learn all the great things about Grandpa... Through our memories and the stories we share, our loved ones can live on, during the holidays and beyond them.
Thank you for reading. Happy Thanksgiving.
Suggested Sites...
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Directory categories:
Bereavement, Grief Groups, Thanksgiving Graces and Blessings, Thanksgiving, Holiday Stress |
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Archived under: Bereavement, Death, Health, Holidays, Mental Health, Thanksgiving |
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Thanksgiving: Time to give thanks for and celebrate our bounty... but have you seen our bounty lately? It's ... well, it's bountiful. Bountylicious. America is having something of an epidemic of, er, bounty. And what was once a celebration of oh-thank-heavens-we-have-enough-food-to-survive-the-winter has become more of a gluttonous culinary dare to see who can eat a winter's worth of calories in a single day.
But wait -- we're not saying that's necessarily a bad thing. Those of us with plenty on our plates should be thankful (and we should also remember -- and help -- those in need), and honestly, most of us could probably be a little more mindful of just how bountiful our everyday meals are, for the sake of our hearts and waistlines. But it's awfully hard to resist the urge to celebrate a harvest festival by eating everything in sight.
We think the occasional celebration of gluttony is a wonderful thing, and Thanksgiving seems like an appropriate day for it. If there's ever a time for deep-fried turkeys, fowl stuffed inside one another, obscene quantities of carbs, and several dessert courses in one meal, this is it. But why stop with the traditional Thanksgiving fixings? Why not get all of the indecent cravings for food obscenities you want to try but know you shouldn't out of the way at once? Load that Thanksgiving table with bacon-crusted bacon with bacon dipping sauce, deep-fried pancakes, sandwiches with fried chicken breasts instead of buns, and deep-fried butter. And don't forget to save room for the deep-fried Twinkies, supersized creme eggs, and Krispy Kreme Bread Pudding.
We can have salads Friday -- and not the kind served in bowls made of bacon.
Suggested Sites...
- This Is Why You're Fat - mostly meaty food obscenities that will either make you hungry or make you never want to eat again.
- The Bacon Show - one bacon recipe posted per day. Don't worry -- you can cook as many as you want.
- Super Sized Meals - the bigger, the better, according to these folks. Their doctors may disagree.
- Fancy Fast Food - turning fast food items into gourmet (looking) meals.
- Pimp That Snack - junk food writ large.
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Directory categories:
Thanksgiving Recipes, Holiday Side Dishes, Deep Frying Recipes, Turducken, Thanksgiving Desserts |
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Archived under: Cooking, Eating, Fanatics, Food and Drink, Holidays, Recipes, Society and Culture, Thanksgiving |
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If you'd lived where I've lived, you might think there's really no reason to learn how to bake bread at home. I grew up in Taipei, where you'll find at least two bakeries on every block. Here in San Francisco, I head to Tartine Bakery when I need a buttery fix, and for a good, crusty loaf, there's always the Acme
Bread Company.
So why bake my own bread?
If only for reasons explained only by nostalgia, the idea of homemade bread, hot from the oven, makes me and my dinner guests go absolutely crazy. When I announced that I would be making bread, a handful of Yahoo! editors readily volunteered themselves to be the taste-testers.
Bread baking could seem like a daunting undertaking, but a few no-knead, foolproof recipes have recently emerged to ease the novice baker into making bread. Food bloggers have talked endlessly about Mark Bittman's no-knead bread recipe, which uses a super-slow rising period and calls for baking the dough in a heavy, enclosed pot.
For this Thanksgiving, I tested another no-knead recipe from Ree Drummond's fantastic website, The Pioneer Woman. Her cult-like following is easy to understand when you try this recipe. These sweet dinner rolls achieve their volume with the help of some yeast, a little baking powder, and baking soda mixed in at the end. I
cheated a little by kneading the dough a few times before rolling it into little balls and baking them in a liberally-buttered muffin tin.
These rolls baked quickly, and only 15 minutes later, my fellow Yahoo! editors were buttering the hot rolls and drizzling honey over them.
I had plenty of dough left over to make a big braided loaf, which I sliced up for French toast the next morning, using the French toast recipe from "The Joy of Cooking."
If you're looking to impress your Turkey Day guests, check out the Yahoo! Directory for even more bread recipes.
Suggested Sites...
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Directory categories:
Bread Recipes, Baking, French Toast Recipes, Thanksgiving Recipes, Recipes |
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Archived under: Bread, Cooking, Eating, Food and Drink, Holidays, In Character, Recipes, Thanksgiving |
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Jack Pierce makes up Karloff
as the Frankenstein monster
(Photo by Jhayne) |
When I was growing up, I loved horror movies -- especially monster movies. I don't mean the gorefests that populate the screen today; the ones that substitute shock for real psychological terror. No, I loved the Universal monster movies that featured the Wolf Man, the Invisible Man, Dracula, and, most of all, Frankenstein’s monster (or just "Frankenstein," as we called him in those days).
Most of the reason for that love was Boris Karloff. In spite of how many people he murdered, tortured, or terrorized on camera, it was obvious that, behind the character, there was a decent and funny man who projected a real humanity.
Karloff was born on November 23, 1887, as William Henry Pratt. As a child, it was expected he'd follow his brother into the British Foreign Service, but he developed a love of acting that took him first to Canada, then finally to Hollywood, where between gigs acting in silent films, he worked as a ditch digger and truck driver to pay the bills.
When sound films came along in the late 1920s, his stage training (and British accent) helped him make the transition to talkies, but he was still mired in supporting roles like "Rev. T. Vernon Isopod" or "Sport Williams." Finally, in 1931, the role of a lifetime -- the Frankenstein monster -- came along, and even though he was unbilled at the time (the credits showed the Monster as being played by "?"), he had achieved screen immortality, becoming one of the few actors to be so well known as to be billed with just one name: "Karloff."
It took Universal a bit of time to realize what an asset they had in Karloff. They lent him out to Warner Bros. for a memorable turn as a cadaverous gangster in the original "Scarface" and to MGM to star in the insidious Dr. Fu Manchu. But once the box-office returns came in ($12,000,000 -- nearly $200 million today... that's before adjusting for the 25 cents audiences paid in 1931!), they took full advantage of him in such classics as "The Old Dark House," "The Mummy," "The Black Cat," and (best of all) "The Bride of Frankenstein" -- some 42 features over the next ten years.
In 1941, Karloff left Hollywood to appear on Broadway in the comedy "Arsenic and Old Lace," playing another homicidal maniac -- one who’d had plastic surgery and now looked like -- Boris Karloff. Over the next three decades, Karloff alternated between stage, screen, radio, and television, shifting easily between comedy and drama. His integrity and talent were such that, even after the many times he had kidded his "horror star" image, he was still utterly believable when he did a straight role that would scare the pants off audiences.
When he died at the age of 81 in 1967, his name was still the gold standard for the genre, (an accomplishment that no one else -- in any film genre -- has ever matched) and for some of us, it still is.
Suggested Sites...
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Directory categories:
Boris Karloff, Horror Movies, Classi Hollywood Actors, Frankenstein, Actors |
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Archived under: 1930s, 1940s, Actors, Biographies, Birthdays, Boris Karloff, Celebrities, Entertainment, Horror, Horror Films, In Character, Monsters and Creatures, Movies |
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Famous for all eternity;
Donald Trump only wishes
he had this much bling
Photo by v.williams46 |
Few historical figures are mired in as much mystery as the young boy king, Tutankhamun. Had he died in the 21st century,
it's likely his face would have been plastered across celebrity gossip blogs (alongside pictures of his enormous treasure trove of wealth) and Internet forums endlessly circulating rumors regarding his cause of death. To this day, historians are still uncertain how Tutankhamun died so suddenly at age 19. However, had it not been for his untimely death, he might have been lost in historical obscurity; just another Egyptian pharaoh with a lot of pretty baubles. Sure, Qin Shi Huang's Terracotta Army is one of the greatest archeological discoveries of modern times, but did Steve Martin perform a song about him?
British Egyptologist Howard Carter first discovered
the steps to Tutankhamun's tomb under the remains of workers' huts in November of 1922, more than 3,000 years after it had first been sealed. A few weeks later on November 26,
Carter and Lord Carnarvon entered the antechamber of the tomb, uncovering one of the most extensive and well-preserved burial sites of a pharaoh to date. Their discovery vaulted Tutankhamun out of royal anonymity and into the same sphere of other tragic historical figures such as Pocahontas, the Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna, and Princess Diana. Within a short period of time, Tutankhamun had gone from a blip in an ancient line of rulers, to a mysterious young king frozen inside a gilded fairytale.
People love a good story, but there's something unique about that combination of wealth, privilege, and a life cut down at its prime that continues to pique our curiosity.
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Directory categories:
Tutankhamun, The Curse of King Tut, Howard Carter, Egyptian History, Egyptology |
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Archived under: 1920s, Ancient History, Archaeology, Curses, Egypt, History, Museums, Royalty, Tutankhamun |
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