Did you know that Koalas, or Koala Bears, are not actually bears as many people believe?! They’re actually more closely related to kangaroos and wombats! Check out these 18 fun and interesting facts about koalas & learn something new!
Koalas are only 25 to 35 inches long, and weigh just 30 pounds or less!
A baby koala which has been just born is usually less than 1 inch long.
A new-born koala usually stays inside the mother’s pouch for about six months.
The word koala means “An animal which does not drink”.
A koala mostly eats eucalyptus leaves and hardly drinks any water.
Like the kangaroo, they also have the ability to carry their babies in their pouch.
They actually do not belong to the bear family in any way.
A koala sleeps for around 20 hours a day.
They are not very social animals and usually stay alone.
Every male koala has a scent gland on the chest which they rub on the trees to mark their territories.
Only one baby koala is born per year to a female.
They communicate with each other by making a snore like sound which is followed by a belch.
A fully grown koala can eat approximately 2.2 pounds of leaves in a night.
A new-born cub has no fur on its body and the eyes and ears are also closed. Koalas are mostly found in Australia.
They have different fur type in different areas.
Gumtrees act as both food and place for living for koalas.
A koala gets fully grown in the fourth year of their life.
I always make turkey breasts for Thanksgiving—one on Thanksgiving and one the day after Thanksgiving, because I rarely have leftovers. Let me just say it up front—I do NOT like leftovers—hubby’s okay with them and always eats any leftovers, but Thanksgiving is a whole other animal! The day after Thanksgiving, my family is up for another round of the same meal. Rather than make double on Thanksgiving, I am more open to making the entire meal again…today.
Happy We-Don’t-Have-Leftovers Day!
JUST FOR FUN: If you’re not into Black Friday shopping and want something to do while eating your leftovers, here’s a takeoff from an Insta-Quiz from AARP:
Second to Last
“A” is the last letter of the most state names, 21 of them. (Without looking them up) name the 21 states.
AND, for good measure…
The letter in second place ends the names of 5 states. What’s that letter??
I’m not sure how much time I will actually be on here today, due to cooking responsibilities, family conversations and clean-up duties…so I wanted to take a moment to thank all of you who visit here—those who comment and those who just lurk. And I especially want to extend my gratitude and love to Filly—you make this place fun, informative and worthwhile! I am so grateful for you!
Let’s face it, the turkey is the STAR of the Thanksgiving holiday! That being said, it’s not important to include the turkey in EVERY facet of the day, right? I’m not even sure that IS a turkey in the photo above—looks like the Loch Ness Monster to me.
In my house, we never did much with appetizers on Thanksgiving—the meal was THE focus—and eating before that seemed sacrilege. However, if you want to present your guests with something to do – why are they not pitching in and helping is my question— here are some lovely centerpieces to showcase your talents and occupy their time–seriously, there’s always a need for someone to wash dishes. Your guests will nosh, laugh at times, and be full by dinner. Que sera sera.
Pumpkin Pie is usually the chosen dessert for Thanksgiving dinner, but pumpkin roll is a wonderful alternate!
Cake
3 eggs
1 cup sugar
¾ cup flour
2 tsp cinnamon
2/3 cup pumpkin
1 tsp baking soda
Preheat oven to 350*. Line a cookie sheet with waxed paper. Beat the 3 eggs with the cup of sugar. Add the flour, cinnamon, pumpkin and the baking soda. Mix well.
Spread onto wax paper lined cookie sheet. Bake 10-15 minutes. Cool slightly. Turn onto terry towel sprinkled with powdered sugar. Roll up like a jellyroll and let cool completely.
When cool, unroll and spread filling onto cake and roll back up.
Filling
12 ounces cream cheese, softened
4 Tbsp butter, softened
1 cup powdered sugar
Cream the cream cheese and the butter. Add the powdered sugar.
Viola! Pumpkin Roll!
Now if you’re interested in making a pumpkin roll with a little extra pizazz, check this out! (This is from the Sugar Hero website: http://www.sugarhero.com)
It’s created by using a template and a batter made of butter, egg whites, sugar and flour to pipe the gorgeous leaves in the jelly roll pan ahead of time. (Full instructions can be found at their website.) Then the pumpkin roll recipe proceeds as above. The design bakes onto the pumpkin cake part and creates a beautiful presentation.
Two hundred years after George Washington issued the first presidential proclamation of a day of public thanksgiving, President George H.W. Bush stepped before reporters, 30 schoolchildren and one antsy 50-pound turkey in the White House Rose Garden on November 17, 1989. The public presentation of a plump gobbler to the chief executive in the lead-up to Thanksgiving had been a time-honored photo op since the 1940s, but Bush would add a new presidential tradition of his own. After noting that the turkey appeared “understandably nervous,” Bush added: “Let me assure you, and this fine tom turkey, that he will not end up on anyone’s dinner table, not this guy. He’s granted a presidential pardon as of right now.”
Decades later, the presidential turkey pardon remains an annual Thanksgiving ritual. However, while Bush formalized the fowl tradition, he may not have been the first president to issue a stay of execution to a turkey. A story is told that while Abraham Lincoln occupied the White House, his young son Tad grew so close to a turkey destined for Christmas dinner that he named him Jack and led him around on a leash like a pet. Listening to Tad’s pleas to spare the turkey from his culinary fate, the Great Emancipator granted a reprieve and freed the bird.
A decade later during the administration of President Ulysses S. Grant, Rhode Island poultry dealer Horace Vose began to send plump turkeys to the White House for Thanksgiving dinners. Although a staunch Republican, Vose was non-partisan when it came to turkeys. He sent birds to presidents of both parties until his death in 1913. Beginning in 1946, a pair of poultry industry groups—the National Turkey Federation and the Poultry and Egg National Board—assumed the duties of presenting presidents with turkeys for the holidays. That year, the groups delivered a 42-pound Texas tom to President Harry Truman for Christmas.
While Truman began the ritual of appearing with the gift turkeys in staged photo ops, he is erroneously credited with starting the presidential pardon tradition. The misinformation is so prevalent that the Truman Library has issued a statement on its web site that its staff “has found no documents, speeches, newspaper clippings, photographs, or other contemporary records in our holdings which refer to Truman pardoning a turkey that he received as a gift in 1947, or at any other time during his Presidency.”
In fact, not only did the turkeys given to Truman and some of his successors fail to receive clemency, they suffered a much different fate by ending up on the presidential dinner table. In 1948 Truman told reporters that the turkeys given to him “would come in handy” for the 25 people expected for dinner at his Independence, Missouri, home that Christmas. Ten days before Thanksgiving in 1953, National Turkey Federation president Roscoe Hill presented a live 39-pound turkey to President Dwight Eisenhower, who hoped Hill would kill, freeze and return the gobbler to the White House “in plenty of time because I hope to spend Thanksgiving with my youngsters and I want to take him along.”
A president finally took pity on a gifted bird in 1963 when John F. Kennedy spared the life of a mammoth 55-pound white turkey wearing a sign around its neck—clearly not of its own volition—that read “Good Eating, Mr. President!” “We’ll just let this one grow,” Kennedy said with a grin. “It’s our Thanksgiving present to him.” As the president left the Rose Garden on November 19, 1963, the turkey prepared for its return to a California farm while Kennedy finalized preparations for his fateful trip to Dallas three days later.
Although newspapers in 1963 reported that “Merciful President Pardons Turkey,” the first president to actually use the word “pardon” at the National Thanksgiving Turkey Presentation may have been Ronald Reagan, albeit as a quip. During the throes of the Iran-Contra scandal in 1987, Reagan sidestepped reporters’ questions about whether he planned to pardon any of his aides accused of wrongdoing. When then asked about the fate of the 55-pound turkey he was just given, Reagan joked, “I’ll pardon him.”
Although the National Thanksgiving Turkey and its alternate (sent in case the primary turkey can’t fulfill its duties—mainly, staying alive to make it to the presentation ceremony) now receive stays of execution, their remaining days do not last too long. The skeletons and organs of turkeys bred for consumption are incapable of supporting extreme weights, and most of the reprieved turkeys die prematurely within the following year.
(I went in search of what the Pilgrims ate at the first Thanksgiving and came across this article by Mark Fleming at the newengland.com website.)
The Thanksgiving meal is remarkably consistent in its elements: the turkey, the stuffing, the sweet potatoes, the cranberry sauce. Barring ethical, health, or religious objections, it is pretty much the same meal for everyone, around the country, and through the years of their lives. We stick with the basics and simply change the seasonings.
But what about that first Thanksgiving in the fall of 1621 (historians don’t know the exact date, but place it sometime between September 21 and November 9), when British settlers hosted the first documented harvest celebration? What did they eat at the first Thanksgiving, and how similar is it to the traditional American Thanksgiving meal today?
Here’s how Edward Winslow described the first Thanksgiving feast in a letter to a friend:
“Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruits of our labor. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company almost a week. At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which we brought to the plantation and bestowed on our governor, and upon the captain and others. And although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty.”
What They (Likely) Did Have at the First Thanksgiving
Venison
Fowl (geese and duck)
Corn
Nuts (walnuts, chestnuts, beechnuts)
Shellfish
So venison was a major ingredient, as well as fowl, but that likely included geese and ducks. Turkeys are a possibility, but were not a common food in that time. Pilgrims grew onions and herbs. Cranberries and currants would have been growing wild in the area, and watercress may have still been available if the hard frosts had held off, but there’s no record of them having been served. In fact, the meal was probably quite meat-heavy.
Likewise, walnuts, chestnuts, and beechnuts were abundant, as were sunchokes. Shellfish were common, so they probably played a part, as did beans, pumpkins, squashes, and corn (served in the form of bread or porridge), thanks to the Wampanoags.
It’s possible, but unlikely, that there was turkey at the first Thanksgiving.
What They (Definitely) Did Not Have at the First Thanksgiving
A turkey centerpiece
Potatoes (white or sweet)
Bread stuffing or pie (wheat flour was rare)
Sugar
Aunt Lena’s green bean casserole
But how about bringing a little more truly traditional flavor back to your table? Back in 2003, we consulted with historians at Plimoth Plantation, the Wampanoag and English settlers living history museum in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and asked writer Jane Walsh to devise a menu that incorporated some of the foods that would have been served at the first Thanksgiving. We didn’t eliminate any favorites or try to go sugar-free. We skipped the venison. Really, like everyone else who will gather around a table on the fourth Thursday in November this year, we simply changed the seasonings.
The Wampanoag and English settlers may not have had access to all of the ingredients included in these recipes, but by including pheasant, goose, or venison in your Thanksgiving menu, you’re at least paying tribute to a meat they likely enjoyed back in 1621. Chestnuts and native corn were common, too. Here are a few dishes to get you further inspired — both reader-submitted and from the Yankee recipe archives.
Are there any more chilling words than those on the planet?Sigh…but sometimes it’s inevitable…so here goes.Dr…uh…Mrs…First Lady…oh whatever…Jill, we NEED to talk.There may be people surrounding the current…uh…your husband…who insist he remain in office sedated with drugs and ice cream in spite of evidence that he can no longer function cognitively.We can all see that, and perhaps you do not have control over that aspect of things at present.But there is something you DO have control of at the present time and that needs to be addressed post haste.Your wardrobe.
Maybe someone along the campaign trail complimented your floral outfit and you took that to heart and ran with it. Word of advice: STOP RUNNING! It’s not a good look…
To be fair, you did try solids…sigh, another failure. Perhaps maybe wear a bra…and something not so tight. (whispering: you are no longer the sweet young thing sitting on Joe’s lap)
My goodness! And the footwear!! This is the definition of CRINGE.
Admittedly, a former fashion model is a lot easier to dress in any type of clothing…
and yellow is NOT a color for everybody…
But a First Lady should complement her husband, be a strong partner, and champion her own cause. She should not overwhelm, but she should also not fade into the wallpaper or dress like upholstery. It just makes her a target.
There are few animals on Earth who work as well together as meerkats. These squirrel-size members of the mongoose family live in groups of different sizes, from as little as three to as big as 50 members. Everyone in the mob participates in gathering food, keeping a look out for predators and taking care of the babies.
Meerkats live in the deserts and grasslands of the southern tip of Africa. They are super cute, with bushy, brown-striped fur, a small, pointed face and large eyes surrounded by dark patches. These extremely social animals live together in burrows, which they dig with their long, sharp claws. Living underground keeps mob members safe from predators and out of the harsh African heat. These burrows contain multiple entrances, tunnels, and rooms. A group will use up to five separate burrows at a time.
Meerkats only go outside during the daytime. Each morning, as the sun comes up, the mob emerges and begins looking for food. They use their keen sense of smell to locate their favorite foods, which include beetles, caterpillars, spiders and scorpions. They’ll also eat small reptiles, birds, eggs, fruit and plants. Back at the burrow, several babysitters stay behind to watch over newborn pups. This duty rotates to different members of the mob, and a sitter will often go all day without food. The babysitters” main job is to protect pups from meerkats in rival mobs who, if given the chance, will kill the babies.
While the rest of the mob forages for food, one of the meerkats (or sometimes more), called a sentry, will find a high point, like a termite mound, and perch on its back legs. From here it scans the sky and desert for predators such as eagles, hawks and jackals. A sentry who senses danger will let out a high-pitched squeal, sending the mob scrambling for cover.
Meerkats dig safe places called bolt holes throughout their foraging area, where they can hide in an emergency. But if caught in the open by a predator, a meerkat will try to look fierce, lying on its back and showing its teeth and claws. If a group is confronted, the meerkats will stand together, arching their backs, raising their hair and hissing. This sometimes fools an attacker into thinking they are a single large, vicious animal.
The other evening, on an episode of Last Man Standing, Tim Allen’s wife, Vanessa was discussing her favorite Thanksgiving tradition—the gratitude list. She encouraged everyone in her family to add items (big or small) to the list—anything they were grateful for. They would then share the list before they enjoyed their Thanksgiving meal. I was inspired to do the same.
As I sat to make my list, at first it seemed daunting—the country is a mess! Inflation, corruption, rampant crime, impending nuclear war! Sigh…not much to be grateful for there. So, I took a deep calming breath and started again. This time I forced myself to look beyond all that mess and saw a veritable cornucopia of wonderous things to be grateful for.
There are the BIG THINGS…
There is God.
There is my husband.
There is my family.
There is my home.
There are my friends…
Friends who make me laugh.
Friends who inspire me.
Friends who share their stories and listen to mine.
Friends who keep me sane.
There are daily indulgences…
Like smelling fresh cut grass, bacon frying, and cinnamon buns baking.
Like hearing a child laugh, and the words I love you whispered in my ear.
Like leaves changing colors, babies smiling, and bolts of colorful fabric.
Like tasting freshly grilled steak, sweet watermelon or my hubby’s coffee.
And then there’s politics…
I’m grateful Nancy Pelosi is not twins.
I’m grateful Joe Biden spends so much time away from Washington.
I’m grateful Hillary Clinton did not win in 2016.
I’m grateful Donald J. Trump is an America First fighter!!
Sew Colorful 
