A THANKSGIVING DAY TO REMEMBER

Written by Luz Leigh - 18 November 2007

      It was Thanksgiving Day. The young couple and their three-year-old son had been invited to have dinner with his parents. When I say “dinner” I am referring to the noon meal, because I am from the South and that is what we call it. The mother-in-law had assured her she would need to bring nothing but a healthy appetite. She could handle that. And deep down was grateful that nothing more was expected of her. Her cooking skills were not the greatest, whereby the mother-in-law was one of the best cooks in the county.

      The morning weather was clear and cold. That meant the kitchen window panes would be fogged up from the heat arising from the nearby electric range. The stove. The young woman’s thoughts went back some thirty-five years to the days when the older woman lived on a farm with no electricity or natural gas to fuel her stove; only wood that had been cut from the nearby forest. Those were the depression years and times were hard. That did not keep the woman from learning to cook and to cook well. Years later when she and her family had moved to town, it was with a grateful heart that she was able to afford first a gas stove and then her dream….an electric one.

      As the young woman sat in a straight chair in the dining room where she could observe the activity in the small kitchen and talk with her mother-in-law, yet not be in the way, she tried to remember each thing that the older woman did. Why, she asked, do you boil the turkey in that huge pot before putting it in the oven to bake? The answer made sense. “I do that from habit. When I used a wood stove to cook on, it took so long for the turkey to bake in the oven, so I would par-boil it for a while before putting it in the oven.” Made sense to the young woman. She learned that the broth created by the boiling of the turkey could be used in making the cornbread dressing and giblet gravy.

      She hears her young son’s laughter as he plays with his granddaddy in the yard. Dressed warmly, he couldn’t wait for their play time in cold air. Her son is the first male grandchild, so he gets special attention from the grandparents. They love the granddaughters, but a male heir is special. At the present time, the little boy is squealing as the granddaddy pushes him in the swing. There is now laughter from both. Little did they know that on a cold January day just a few years later, the man’s laughter would be stilled here on earth when he was called home for eternal rest. But today, there was only joy.

      The meal is ready. The living room clock is striking twelve. How could that lady get all that food prepared and on the table at the precise time? Practice and good work ethics. Oh, I forgot to mention something. There were about ten other guests there to share the meal and only one had brought a dish. The strange cousin from Louisiana had broken the unwritten rule….never bring food to Aunt Zudie home. And wouldn’t you know? She brought a PRUNE cake! And she failed to warn any of the other guests about the consequences of eating more than a tiny bit of that cake.

      Besides the turkey and dressing, mentioned earlier, the lady of the house loaded the table with her mashed ‘tators that everyone agreed were out of this world, cream peas from her garden, some sort of congealed salad with fruit in it, pecan pie, bread pudding with lemon sauce, and to further spoil her only son, a coconut cream pie that only she could make. 

      Even after the young woman had been married more than thirty years, she never equaled the older woman in preparing for a crowd. And after a while she stopped trying. But she is thankful for all the hints and tips she received from her mother-in-law. When the weather is cold on Thanksgiving morning and she enters her kitchen, she can’t help but think of that happy day when she learned of par-boiling a turkey and to always warn folks about prune cakes.

      Happy Thanksgiving.