Thanksgiving holiday is finally here! Both students and teachers are glad that the time has finally come for us to kick back, relax and not think about school for a few days.
Reflections on Thanksgiving Day..
Mom used to make the best turkey gravy--I have yet to duplicate it! I'm going to give it a try one more time, I think I may have come upon a way to make it taste good, nice and thick and brown and carmelized in flavor--nothing like it!
Mother-in-law was always afraid that she wouldn't cook the turkey enough. She always used her Nesco roaster to cook the turkey. The tantilizing smells came from her basement, where she used the roaster, because there was no other place in their cozy little cottage home to set it up. When Ed and I went down to retrieve the turkey, it was so done we didn't have to carve it! It fell apart into a million pieces right there in the roaster. Mighty good tasting shards, as I remember!
Somehow, my mother let me carve the turkey. The bad part is that is was messy, the good part is you got to taste the bird before serving it! Those little pieces that were too small to put on the platter were just right for a quick before dinner snack! I still get to carve the bird, as often as not! And I get to snag the first tastes, too!
Snowy Thanksgivings--somehow, I remember a lot of these days. Either T-day itself was snowy, or the Wednesday before Thanksgiving was snowy. I do remember the T-day of '75, I was pregnant with child #3, and we had to mush through about 8" of snow to get to church. Luckily, church was only 2 blocks away, but it ws an adventure getting there!
T-day at Aunt Margie's house, I guess it was about '59. I ate and ate, she was a fabulous cook. I still remember how miserable I was after that meal because I was too stuffed full! But it was all worth it, very delicious! New mantra, only take one helping of everything, no matter how good it tastes, then you won't suffer all night from being too full! Memories of miseries seemm to last a long time! Let's see, that was 50 years ago!
Turkey sandwiches as a bed-time snack. After the whole kitchen is cleaned up, and we've napped through a couple of boring tv shows after dinner, we awoke with a hunger pang or two, which meant, we needed to go back to the fridge for leftover turkey sandwiches, on white bread and covered with Miracle Whip.
We never played football, took hikes, or did anything that active after dinner on Thanksgiving day. But my brother, who is the family archivist, usually entertains us with a photographic show of some sort or another! Sometimes the tryptophan from the turkey kicks in and snoozing takes place, but we do appreciate his efforts and he is really a great keeper of family memories. He has many sets of photos, some are his, some are family members who have passed on, but he manages to group them togther to make an interesting show. When I was hosting a Korean student last spring, he had some pictures from Korea where he was stationed in the Army in the early 70's. She was able to identify some places that she recognized that were still there. Very interesting! She appreciated that a lot!
My first turkey as a married woman--1964. It wasn't like mom's but it was edible. I didn't forget and cook the giblets in with the turkey, I had helped my mom enough to know not to do that. It was a little bit pale, first time in an electric oven. But we enjoyed it. WE were just about to move into our first home from an apartment, and I was 8 months pregnant, so we weren't traveling to visit (we lived 400 miles from our families that year.) It was just Mr. and me and a soon to be born kid, there in our little apartment, enjoying the first turkey I cooked on my own.
Ok, there are a lot of memories from past Thanksgivings. I hope you have a great Thanksgiving day, enjoy your meal, and most of all, enjoy those you celebrate with!
P.S. Happy Black Friday, have fun out there in the cold at 4 a.m. in the morning, not me, I'll be thinking of you as I turn over and catch another couple of hours between the sheets, while you spend all your money on stuff you don't need!
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