Last Thanksgiving on Rocky Top

A myriad of circumstances left Scottie and I in Tennessee again for Thanksgiving this year. Last year, being a new graduate student in the UT band program, he was, of course, deathly afraid of going home to Ohio and not being able to make it back for the game on Saturday. I cooked an itty-bitty turkey, we had dinner, pie and took a nap. Pretty standard Thanksgiving behavior.
This year, I assumed he would have the same kind of fear that gripped him last year, and I signed up to work the Friday after the holiday. (Stop looking at me like I'm crazy...They were offering two floating holidays! Evil corporations don't usually do that! I took them up on it.) Also, in order to get a Saturday off that I needed earlier in the month, I switched Saturday duty with a co-worker, so I had to be in town for the weekend anyway. Though we wish we could have been home, we sucked it up and had a little dinner by ourselves.

After we made our initial decision this year to stay in town, I went shopping for our dinner supplies. I opted to do a full-grown 14lb turkey so that we would have leftovers (strategic busy cook planning in full effect), mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans, and of course, pumpkin pie. Last year, my first attempt at pumpkin pie went great. This year, I decided to kick it up and make the pie from SCRATCH. That's right, no canned ingredients. OK, wait. I did use canned spices ('cause I don't have a garden, and I don't think there's such a thing as a "pumpkin-pie-spice-plant". Would that be a tree? A root? Subject for another posting.) I also used evaporated milk from a can, because frankly, trying to evaporate milk on my own sounds like I'd end up with a wholelotta nothing. Moving on.
I used a REAL pumpkin. I baked it, scooped out the mush and beat the crap out of it in my kitchen aid stand mixer (THANK YOU AUNT RETTA!!!) , and viola! (wah-la, not the instrument). It turned out GREAT! (I'll post a picture, but it looks like a normal pie, be warned) I was worried about the consistency, but it was fabulous. More importantly, Scottie stuffed himself crazy.

While I was in the kitchen on Thursday, I started thinking about how I got there. Not necessarily here in Tennessee, but how I ended up in our kitchen, cooking Thanksgiving for two, and not being the least big scared about it. I began to wonder how I wasn't daunted at all by anything related to cooking, and haven't ever been, really. It occurred to me that I come from a long line, both maternal and paternal, of excellent cooks. My grandmothers dominated the field, of course, each having their own specific talents, ie. Grandma Jones' gravy (never ever to be duplicated) and Grandma Berg's turkey (I never noticed a dry piece. Ever. Period.) My mom has Christmas cookies, crock pot cooking and grilling nailed down, and if you want a chimichanga, lasanga, or other specialty food, please see Aunt Retta. These women made me get in the kitchen and cook- I learned a lot of the mechanics of cooking and baking from all of them, and some things that you wouldn't notice until the job was done. These women, though two of them have passed, and my mom and aunt are 2 states away, are always with me when I cook. For instance, whenever I start the oven, I can hear my mom saying "Turn the dial to 375- that's the mark between 350 and 400"- even if I'm not going to that temperature. I can see my aunt laughing and Gramma J laughing and chopping veggies quickly (onions especially to avoid crying). Even my preference for flour-sack towels over terry cloth bar mops harkens back to some tea-towels I saw in my grandma's kitchen, and how they didn't leave little lint pieces on the dishes. I think about how special a gift this part of my life has been, and though he doesn't really mention it a whole lot, how thankful my husband is that I have these skills. I'm part of a fantastic legacy that someday I hope to continue.

Although dinner turned out great, and we of course have a ton of leftovers, I am looking forward to the possibility of moving back closer to our family. That way, I'm only responsible for one or two things for the family dinner. Less work and more fun- if only everything in life were like a family carry-in Thanksgiving dinner.