Woman in the Middle

My mother cooked Thanksgiving Dinner from scratch year after year. It was delicious every time. When I got my very first full time job out of college, I worked with a woman named Jennifer. One day, right before Thanksgiving, she and I were discussing what we would be having for the big dinner. She mentioned that she took some shot cuts, such as using boxed stuffing mix. I was appalled. Not make Thanksgiving from scratch? How could she even consider it? I am sure how I felt about her semi-homemade Thanksgiving was written all over my face….

A couple of years later, right after I married Hubby, my mother developed health problems and  Thanksgiving dinner (and every other holiday dinner for that matter) became my duty. With my mother and my grandmother (and Brother Dear, too) all expecting the same delicious dinner that Mom always made, I slapped on the cook hat and for several years I cooked Thanksgiving dinner from scratch, just the way mom did. The year I was pregnant with my second daughter it just about killed me. The next year I decided that it was time to make some changes.

Ever since then we have had Thanksgiving dinner in a variety of ways. We have gone out to restaurants. We have bought already cooked meals in a box from the grocery store. This year we had what I would call semi-homemade, just like my co-worker said she did so many years ago. Thanksgiving dinner is like the Super Bowl of meals and even doing it the semi-homemade route, it is a lot of work. I now completely understand why Jennifer took a few short cuts on her way to getting the big  meal on the table.

My older self would like to offer Jennifer, wherever she is, my apologies for looking down my nose at how she made Thanksgiving Dinner some thirty years ago. Ah, the arrogance of youth! And the wisdom of middle age!

I will never forget the year we had two Thanksgivings. Pain tends to cement memories into your brain….

Some friends of ours had moved to Flagstaff Arizona, about an eight our drive from our home in Southern California. The year I was 13 or so my parents decided that we were going to visit them, leaving the day after Thanksgiving and returning Sunday.  Because we were leaving the day after Turkey Day my mom didn’t want to cook the big meal and have all those leftovers moldering in the fridge while we were gone.  My grandmother fixed the meal that year and we ate at the usual time, 2 p.m., at her mobile home, just the four of us.  It was a wonderful meal because Nanny was a great cook. We did what all self-respecting Americans do on Thanksgiving – We pigged out.

The only problem with that was that my mother, for some unknown reason, also accepted an invitation to have Thanksgiving dinner with our friends the Millers later that evening.  The three of us agreed that we weren’t going to eat much at the Millers because we were already stuffed. Yeah, right. If nothing else, we Americans know how to do a Thanksgiving meal right! I could not believe the food my dad put on his plate! But, my mom and I ate up too, just not quite with the same gusto as he did. My dad loved good food!

I have never been so full in my life, before or since. I have got to tell you, it cut down on the stops the next day because none of us was hungry! I think I had one apple on the whole eight hour trip. My parents didn’t eat at all until we had dinner in Flagstaff. To this day I can not believe we did that. And I don’t recommend it as a strategy before a long car trip either. Just step away from the table….

I wish all of you a very Happy and Yummy Thanksgiving!

One 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.

Today I am going to give you my Pumpkin Pie recipe. Over the last few years I have tweaked the standard recipe found on the back of the Libby’s pumpkin can to suit my tastes more. It all started with a mistake I made several years ago. The standard recipe calls for two cans of evaporated milk to make the two-pie recipe. Well, I messed up and put only one can of milk in that particular batch. Oops! But I liked the result as it was just more pumpkiny. Then it evolved even more because of  the pumpkin pie my mother’s best friend Emma Jane makes. She uses less sugar in her pie and I liked that as well as it made it less overwhelmingly sweet and made the pie and whipped cream work so well together, as opposed to fighting it out for the title of which is the sweetest. The last thing I did, which I just started last year, it to put all the ingredients in the blender and blend the heck out of it. That makes up for any creaminess lost due to cutting down on the milk. I like my pumpkin pie to be really creamy! So here it is!

Kim’s Pumpkin Pie

1 cup brown sugar

1 tsp salt

2 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground ginger

1/2 tsp ground cloves

4 large eggs

1 -29 oz can pumpkin (not pie filling!!!)

1 -12 oz can evaporated milk

2 unbaked deep dish frozen pie crusts

Put everything (but the pie crust) in a blender and blend until well mixed. I recommend putting the wet ingredients in first and then the spices so they don’t get stuck in the bottom of the blender. Pour into the two pie shells and bake in a preheated 425 degree oven for 15 minutes. Reduce heat and bake for 40-50 minutes more until knife inserted near center comes out clean.  Serve with whipped cream, lots of whipped cream!