Thanksgiving Memories and Pumpkin Pie, Part II
Woman in the Middle | November 22, 2011One of my all time favorite foods is sweet potatoes, especially candied sweet potatoes. I really really really love them, but I only got them once a year when I was a child, on that day of days, Thanksgiving. One of my least favorite foods are marshmallows. I don’t hate them, as I will eat them, especially when they are associated with s’mores. But it is a rare occasion when I let a marshmallow cross my lips.
Both my mother and my grandmother (who was my dad’s mom) were amazing cooks. Really fantastic in a way I never will be. My mother always hosted the big holiday meals because my grandmother lived in a single wide mobile home and there just wasn’t enough room. But my grandmother, who we called Nanny, always brought something yummy to the holiday dinner. I always looked forward to Thanksgiving and those candied sweet potatoes, southern style, with no yucky marshmallows on top.
Then, one year, when I was about seven or eight years old, the sweet potatos, I realized in horror, had been placed in a casserole dish, covered with marshmallows, and run under a broiler! Yuck! So I said, in a very upset and petulant voice, “Mom, why do these sweet potatoes have marshmallows on them????!!!!????” My mother replied, in a very sweet voice, “Your grandmother made them.” Whoa! In spite of my youth I realized that I had just made a faux pas of the highest order! And I needed to correct it fast! So, changing my attitude on a dime, I said in my sweetest voice, “The sweet potatoes are good, Nanny.” Nothing else was said. I ate the marshmallows with gusto. And neither my mother nor my grandmother ever put marshmallows on the sweet potatoes again.
Recent Comments