When the Pilgrims and Native Americans shared the first Thanksgiving meal, they probably didn’t have any tubs of Cool Whip, cans of gelatinous cranberries or Stove Top stuffing.

And they probably didn’t fall asleep watching TV after gorging themselves silly.

In the spirit of the first Thanksgiving, a Whidbey Island 4-H group dedicated to the preservation of colonial animals and plants cooked and ate a meal using authentic colonial recipes and the ingredients folks would have used before the days of refined sugar and supermarkets.

The group, Colonial Critters, had their third annual Thanksgiving meal at the Heller Road fire station Sunday afternoon. The dining room was packed with club members and their families.

The menu was a combination of what people nowadays would consider traditional and unusual holiday fare. There was mashed potatoes and turnips, squash bread, Celtic lamb stew, cranberry relish, sweet potatoes, baked onions, apple cake, venison roast with gravy, squash pie, sausage stuffing, New England clam chowder, black bean soup, and of course, turkey.

Gary Fisher, who runs the club with his wife Lois, said all the recipes were researched by club members to make sure they were authentic. Many of the recipes came from a cookbook the Farmer family picked up from the Plymouth Plantation during a vacation.

Each family got at least one recipe, which they cooked up and brought to the dinner.

Teresa Farmer said there aren’t a lot of authentic recipes left because colonial folks didn’t tend to write down recipes, but cooked more from instinct and what was available. Also, many of the ingredients aren’t available any more or aren’t the same.

Her son, Quentin, said he helped grind wheat to make flour for squash bread. But they ended up needing 28 cups of flour, while the original recipe called for just a fraction of that.

The colonialists used a lot of molasses as a sweetener and cooked all kinds of different root vegetables, incorporating them into many different recipes.

Anna Skurdal, for example, said her favorites were the squash bread and the sweet potato muffins. The muffins, she said, “were sweet and really good,” but she couldn’t really taste the sweet potatoes.

Lois Fisher said the kids were apprehensive about the unusual flavors in the foods at the club’s first dinner three years ago, but this year they gobbled down just about everything.

You can reach features editor Jessie Stensland at jstensland@whidbeynewstimes.com or call 675-6611.