With Thanksgiving only a few days away, I remember the Thanksgivings past, those spent at my grandmothers’ house and those around our table. One comes to mind.
Several years ago, we passed around a journal and asked everybody to write down what they were thankful for on this day. There were three members of our family there then that are not with us anymore; two have gone home and one for another reason. I miss these people from my family every day, but especially on this day that I am so reminded of my blessings.
Some of us wrote we were thankful for our families, our good fortune in life, our jobs, our faith, and some of my children said how thankful they were for the parents we have been to them. Oh my, that makes a mama so thankful.
I want to leave something, maybe a legacy, to my children and grandchildren. I want them to remember how much and how good I loved them, how much they enjoyed the meals I prepared for them, how I always never let them leave our house without saying “I love you,” and especially how thankful we are that God gave us each child and grandchild.
I do my best to duplicate and reproduce the Thanksgivings I enjoyed as a child growing up at my grandmother’s house. She had a very long planked table with straight chairs and a bench on the back side and at one end. I sat on a little wooden box my grandaddy made for me on the short bench. All my aunts and uncles, cousins, and anybody who happened by at lunch time sat around the big, long table heavily laden with food. You could barely understand all the conversations as it seemed everyone talked at once. We seldom saw everyone all together, so we had so much news to catch up with. It’s the same at our dinner table today.
She always had her cornbread dressing. I use her recipe, with a few additions of my own every time I make the delicious dish. My family loves this just as much as I did when she made it so many years ago.
Along with her dressing, she always cooked a big hen, maybe two. We never had turkey and she incorporated her hen into her cornbread dressing. I don’t do this; mine is served separately. One of her desserts was always her buttermilk chocolate cake. I am making my cocoa cola cake, but it is chocolate.
After lunch, we plan to do just as we always would do — sit around,and talk for a while about deer hunting, inflation, the government, our families, and those we miss.
The thing I am thankful for the most this year is the fact that we can get together this year; we didn’t last year because of COVID.
I hope that you and your family can have a Thanksgiving just like the one we are planning.
My Grandmother’s Cornbread Dressing
Boil 2 chickens until tender and done in 8 quarts of water with one stick of butter and one onion and two stalks of celery
Saute 1 big onion and 1 cup of chopped celery in a stick of butter until tender.
2 large skillets of crumbled cornbread
2 packages of garlic butter croutons
3-4 slices of day-old bread
3 T. of poultry seasoning
3 T. dried sage
4 beaten eggs
salt and pepper
broth from the chickens
1 large can of cream of mushroom soup
1 large can of cream of chicken soup.
If not juicy enough, wash out soup cans and add that water until right consistency. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour.
