"It smells yummy," said Billy. "Can we go down and get closer?"
"Sure we can!" Veronika told him. "Let's all go down! They just put it on the table. That's why it smells so good. They will be sitting down to eat in just a few minutes."
All the dolls who lived in the house with The Writer made their way down the stairs. Mandy helped Pippa, so they would get there faster.
They tiptoed down the hall. Well, they can't bend their little feet, so they just walked as quietly down the hall as they could.
The smells got stronger as they got closer to the kitchen. Finally, they reached the door to the dining room. They looked up at the table. "It's ready to eat," Jolena told them. "They still have to fill the water glasses, and the dessert is waiting on the stove, but everything else is on the table."
"I can't see the food!" Pippa complained. "All I can see is the tablecloth!"
"Actually," Mandy told her, "none of us can see. We're all too short, but we can enjoy the lovely smells."
"Why don't we climb up onto the table?" Pippa asked. "Then we could see all the food!"
"That isn't very polite," Veronika explained. "You don't ever climb onto the table when the family is having a nice dinner. Besides, they will be sitting down to eat in a minute. We would be in the way."
"We don't have to get up there to see the food, anyway," Jolena told them.
"I helped with the cooking," she said. "I used our phone and took photos of everything they're having. I can show you all the photos."
"We can use our imaginations and pretend we're eating," Mariah suggested.
"We only pretend to eat anyway," Charlotte agreed, "so we can look at each photo and pretend to eat what's in the photo."
It was time for the family to sit down for dinner, so the dolls went back down the hall and up the stairs.
When they reached the top of the stairs, they went to the big bedroom. The Writer's son and his family were using the guest room and the work room to sleep in, so the dolls decided to sit on The Writer's bed. As soon as they were all settled on the bed, Jolena found the photos she had taken with the dolls' phone.
She passed the phone around so each doll could look at the photo and pretend they were eating what was in it.
"This is the salad," Jolena said. Each doll looked. "We made it with cucumbers," she said, as they passed the phone around."
"We fixed some turkey, too," she explained.
"That looks tasty," Emil said, when the phone reached him.
"This next photo is the stuffing," Jolena told them. "It's made out of bread. You know, those ends of the loaf no one likes to use for a sandwich? We save them and use them for things like stuffing. They call it stuffing because they can put it inside the turkey," she explained.
"We made gravy to pour over the turkey and stuffing," Jolena continued.
"Then we made some roasted sweet potatoes," Jolena told them. "That was a new recipe for me."
"This looks like some kind of mashed vegetable," Mandy said about the next photo, as she handed the phone to Charlotte.
"Yes," Jolena agreed. "It's rutabaga (ROOT-uh-beh-gah).
Billy would have licked his lips, but his mouth doesn't open. He doesn't have a tongue, either, but he has a really good imagination, and he likes how rutabaga smells. It looks like a turnip, but I read it doesn’t taste the same."
"We made some cranberry sauce, too," Jolena told them. "Cranberries are a fruit. They grow in water. They're very sour, so we put maple syrup in it."
All the dolls admired the picture of the cranberry sauce.
"Finally," Jolena told them with a flourish, "we made dessert. Here it is."
The dolls all looked at the dessert and tried to imagine what it tasted like. It was fun to do that.
"What is it?" Mariah asked.
"It's pumpkin pie," Jolena told her. "Pumpkin is a vegetable. You can use it for a lot of different things. Pumpkin pie is only one."
"Why do they have Thanksgiving every year," Pippa asked when they were done looking at the photos. She remembered Thanksgiving last year, and Pauly had told her that his family was having a big dinner today, too.
"They didn't talk about it in school?" Mariah asked. She was in a different class from Pippa. In her class they had talked about how people long ago left the part of the world we call Europe (YER-op) and England and had come to this continent. She explained this to Pippa.
"Real human people have to eat for real," Mariah told Pippa. "They grow most of their food during the summer, because the plants they use for food need warm weather to grow. The people who came here long ago did that, and when it was starting to get cold in the fall, they harvested their crops. That means they brought all the food in from the fields. They picked the apples, cut the wheat, removed the pumpkins and squash from the vines, dug up the potatoes and put everything away where it would stay safe and wouldn't spoil during the winter."
Charlotte picked up the story. "Then," she said, "when they saw that they had enough food to get through the winter, they were grateful, so they had a big party to celebrate and to give thanks."
"Now they do it every year, so they remember to be grateful for what they have," Emil said.
"Besides," Billy added, "it's a party, and parties are fun!"
"We're really grateful, too," Veronika said. "The Writer and her family need to eat to live. What would we do without them? We're grateful for the food that keeps them healthy."
"The house would be very, very quiet without them," Pippa said.
"With no one to cook for for real," Jolena added.
Billy looked at the others. "There would be no yummy smells!" he told them sadly.
They all tried to think of a house with no sounds, no one to cook for and no yummy smells.
All alone in a big, quiet house, just like standing in a box in a closed toy store. How sad that would be! "We're very lucky dolls, indeed!" Veronika exclaimed. "We have a lot to be thankful for!"
Just then, each of the dolls suddenly could taste turkey and cranberry sauce and rutabaga and stuffing, and all of it was yummy! It was a Thanksgiving miracle!
Veronika: Götz Classic Kidz Vroni
Mandy: Götz Happy Kidz Katie 2015
Jolena: Götz Happy Kidz Lena in Aspen
Charlotte: Götz Happy Kidz Anna in Paris
Mariah: Götz Happy Kidz Mariah, "Chosen" from My Doll Best Friend
Billy: Götz Happy Kidz Lily at London
Emil: Götz Happy Kidz Emilia
"The Doll's Storybook" is not affiliated with Gotz Dolls USA Inc. or Götz Puppenmanufaktur International GmbH.
Watch for the next story each Friday afternoon at 1:00 PM Pacific Time.
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Copyright © 2022 by Peggy Stuart
