Happy Thanksgiving to you and all of your loved ones. Today is our day to give thanks to those that deserve our thanks. Let me first say what I am most thankful for. I am thankful to God for continuing to give me the strength and the courage to remain alive. I want to still be here to give memories and wisdom to others, but mainly to give my memories and wisdom to Annie. I am going to share some of my memories of Thanksgivings-past before I spend a portion of this Thanksgiving with Tom’s family in Southern California. This will be my first flight since my incident over 1 year ago - I am looking forward to it, actually. I am glad, though, it is only a 1-hour flight. When I was growing up in Indiana, we always celebrated Thanksgiving with just our immediate family. The rest of our extended family was in Pennsylvania. So, on Thanksgiving morning Mom got up early and started cooking the “usual turkey” in the oven. She did all the necessary cleaning and removal of things, of course, before having to put it in. I remember the first time I cooked a whole turkey myself...I had to call her and get blow-by-blow instructions on how to hold and clean a turkey before getting it ready for the oven. Gosh, I think I was already in my 20’s!! She placed the turkey in the oven without putting dressing (stuffing) inside. (I’ll explain the dressing in a moment.) At the Thanksgiving dinner with the turkey, we had mashed potatoes made with good old-fashioned russet potatoes (still my go-to all-time favorite anytime), corn, her dressing, turkey gravy and dinner rolls. We also had her famous cucumbers and onions (sliced cucumbers, sliced onions, equal parts water and vinegar, and sugar, and some salt/pepper to season) instead of a salad. Dad liked cranberries so he got the canned cranberry sauce! Okay the dressing was “on-the-side” and not cooked in the turkey. Mom cut up white bread into nearly 1” squares and added cut-up celery and onions and seasoned it with salt, pepper, parsley. She let it “toast” (dry out) in the oven at 350 degrees. She kept an eye on it, as you should, to make sure it didn’t burn. She softened it lightly with some Swanson Vegetable Broth. It truly resembled Stove Top Brand Stuffing of today! So on the plate, the special plates (as pictured above - 22-carat gold trimmed, now at least 70 years old) that we used for only Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years, was the turkey, mashed potatoes and the dressing. All of those (before the corn, cucumbers/onions, rolls) I would smother with her turkey gravy. My mom's gravy was made with the drippings from the turkey cooking in the oven with a little bit of flour. After that delicious Thanksgiving dinner some of us (my dad and me) would take a nap until it was time to enjoy a piece of Mom’s homemade apple pie. I tried to spend as many post-high school Thanksgiving Holidays with family but that isn’t as possible once you go away to college, and that really isn’t as possible once you then move across the country!!
Again, Happy Thanksgiving and God Bless You, Peg! “When I started counting my blessings, my whole life turned around.” -Willie Nelson
1 Comment
Laura
11/29/2018 10:00:39 am
Hey Peg! This was nice to learn more about your family traditions at Thanksgiving. What beautiful plates! I liked the cucumber dish instead of salad. Thank you for sharing more about you!
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