Southern Thanksgiving: Butter, Onion, Garlic and Sugar

Today my cousin Beth and I cooked thanksgiving dinner for the first time by ourselves. Beth and I have always helped with cooking Christmas dinner, but have never been responsible for getting the entire meal finished. Something we've learned over the years from my mom and grandmother are the staples of southern cooking...Butter, Garlic, Onions, and Sugar. Almost everything we made today had at least two of these ingredients. Last week my mom had knee replacement surgery so she spent most of the day in the recliner. She came into the kitchen briefly to give instructions and then our adventure began. We hoped that our grandmother who cooked several Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners would inspire us and that she would be proud of us. Well it turned out to be an adventure for sure, with somethings that grandma would do and somethings she wouldn't. 

Last night Beth and I began our cooking adventure, with the desserts. We made a chocolate cake, 3 pumpkin pies, and 2 pecan pies. We also made a lime congealed jello salad. This proved to be an interesting experience. At one point Beth commented, "Sarah, I don't think its (pumpkin pie) suppose to look like this." You see the pumpkin pie recipe called ground cloves, but we had none, so we put the whole cloves in the magic bullet to make our own ground cloves. Needless to say the magic bullet doesn't make very good ground cloves. They are kind of chunky. Well chunky continued to be at the theme of the evening. My mom makes this lime jello salad. So I made it last night. As I was mixing it up Beth informed me that the I should have mixed up the cream cheese before adding the jello, so we had some chunks of cream cheese in the jello mold. Darci (beth's daughter) helped me make "Grandma's famous chocolate pound cake". My grandmother would always make this cake for me when I came to visit so it is very special to make it. Midway through the night we realized that we had a huge mess to deal with. Every mixing bowl in the kitchen had been used. While making chocolate icing Darci managed to spread cocoa all over the stove. We went to bed about midnight and planned to get up at 630 am. 

This morning my mom gave us a few instructions on how to cook a turkey. We put our turkey in the oven a proceeded to make the dressing. Now in our family, making dressing is a task. We don't just cook stuffing. You have to make cornbread and toast bread. Then you mix it up with celery and onion. My grandmother put onion in everything, it is definitely a southern staple. I made broccoli salad, one of my favorite dishes. One of the highlights of the morning was finding two tubes of cream corn in the deep freeze from Georgia. Now its not good as fresh cream corn from the cob which is by far the best, but we made do. We also made green bean casserole, deviled eggs, and yeast rolls. Well not homemade yeast rolls, they were frozen. Grandma would have made homemade yeast rolls. We made sweet potato casserole complete with marshmallows. Beth used the potato strainer like grandma would have, but we didn't have the pestle so she had to use a spatula. We also microwaved the sweet potatoes, again something grandma wouldn't do. She would have peeled, cubed, and boiled them. 

Dinner turned out well. We cooked for about 4 hours last night and 6 this morning and it was all over in 20 minutes of eating. Today the children and Dave and my brother Stephen cleaned up after lunch while Beth and I directed from the dining room table, again something my grandmother would have never done. Today Beth and I gained a greater appreciation of how hard grandma worked to cook Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. I remember my grandmother staying up late on Christmas eve to make preparations for the big lunch the next day. By the time I got there she had already been baking for days. She would make preparations for the dressing on Christmas eve. Then she would wake up early and start cooking the turkey and finish everything needed for lunch. She would make breakfast for us as well. We would usually have a ham in addition to the turkey. Today my mom asked us if we just made all of our favorite dishes. I guess in a way you could say we did. We made everything that we could think of that grandma would have had. After lunch we decided there was one dish we left out...homemade mac and cheese, so we will have to make that later this weekend. 

Today I am thankful for my grandmother. She was a selfless woman who gave of herself. Today after dinner was over and we were so tired we decided that grandma was truly a Stout Woman. She taught us how to serve other people. She taught us how to love others selflessly. She also taught us how to cook. While we were nervous about being in charge of this dinner Grandma taught us how to cook and so did my mom. Today I missed my grandma, but knew that she was looking down on us from heaven. I wished I had asked my grandma more of her secrets to cooking and what recipes she used. Many times she didn't use a recipe or modified it. I wish we had those modifications. My mom told us that she was proud of us and that we had out done ourselves. I also believe that my grandma would have been proud of us as well. I know it would have been hard for her to stay out of the kitchen, like it was for my mom, but she would have been very proud of her two granddaughters.