Thanksgiving

                                        National Cooking Week

“Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not a coincidence.”

                                              Erma Bombeck

Let the cooking begin! I don't know about you, but Thanksgiving dinner is something I dread every year. I slave over the stove for days until I'm too tired to eat, and then I eat so much I'm miserable for days more. I dare not step on the scales until after weeks of walking ten miles a day. (Well, maybe two...) It's not the pumpkin pie that is my downfall, it is the cornbread-and-apple-wood-smoked-bacon-dressing and giblet (pronounced jib-let in the south) gravy.

Most of the time, I am not a traditionalist, but on Thanksgiving, I am overruled by the rowdy crowd that descends upon my house. This year I had planned to have something 'different' like a standing rib roast, but I received a text message saying, “We've ordered a smoked turkey from the barbeque place!” So much for different, and God forbid that any born and bred Southerner should get through a holiday without a haunch of barbequed critter of some stripe. It would be simply un-American.

My great-aunts used to make a Thanksgiving meal that looked like a Norman Rockwell painting. So much food there was barely space for plates and utensils. My favorite memory from their table was Aunt Lyda's spiced peaches—made at the peak of summer sweetness, studded with whole cloves, and canned in a sugar brine for serving at winter holidays. I used to make them myself back when I was an ambitious woman, and not a lazy one. My mother made the best traditional stuffing on earth, and she always made oyster stuffing for my dad. Oysters layered with saltine crackers and rich cream sauce and then baked until brown and bubbly. My sister and I thought it was nasty back then, but now, yummmm.

In my world view, Thanksgiving and not Independence Day, is the uniquely American holiday. I hope that in the midst of the gorging, we will take a moment to express our gratitude for all who have come before us and all who will come after us, and for the millions of turkeys who have made Thanksgiving possible in the first place. Get cooking!

                                         In the spirit,

                                           Jane