Thanksgiving Memories

If you made one of these in school and your mom didn’t proudly display it on the refrigerator, you were cheated out of a wonderful memory.

This is the time of year I miss my grandma most. Our farmhouse was always filled with lots of hungry relatives and cousins for me to spend the day with. Granny would bring two bags of stale bread home the day before and my sister and I would tear it into small pieces in the double roaster every wife had back then. She boiled the neck and the giblets for a whole day to cut up and put in her dressing Thanksgiving morning. Celery, onions, and a secret blend of spices went into the concoction.

Besides mashed potatoes, she made butternut squash the same way. Peeled, cubed,b oiled and mashed with milk, butter, salt and some brown sugar. The star, besides the huge bird, were her pies. Nobody was her equal. Pumpkin, apple, banana cream and mincemeat, which you can’t even find anymore. She was already up and working when we went out to do chores. When we came in, the smells permeating the house were akin to ambrosia.

One of the rites of passage was when you graduated from the children’s table to the big table. When granny decided dinner was over there was no argument. She’d get up and start snatching up plates to wash whether you were finished or not. Time for coffee and pie. We’d have more than 30 people gathered there and nobody went home hungry. Heck, the uncles always took some of her to-die-for fruit salad home for their lunch the next day.

Granny wasn’t a chef. She didn’t make any fancy sauces or use exotic techniques when she cooked. She had a stove and a Sunbeam Mixmaster to make all her baked goods and whip the meringue that topped all her cream pies. Cast iron skillets and pans that showed years of use were the tools of her trade. She just made simple, tasty food and lots of it. Why is it nobody could cook like your grandmother could? Simple. They used an ingredient you couldn’t find in any grocery store. That ingredient was love.