Thanksgiving dinner and Kansas dressing
Idon’t know if I thought of it or read it somewhere that “everything is better in your memory.” It is true that we can forgive and forget many things, trivial, nit-picky hang-ups, that might have nagged at us in the past.
High school reunions wouldn’t happen if we held fast to and nursed disappointments and stings endured during our school days.
That said, if it wasn’t for getting rocked now and then, we wouldn’t learn from our mistakes and the repeated mistakes of others.
Holidays, Thanksgiving included, can serve up a helping of memories, some worth keeping.
I’m not that wild about turkey. The redemption of the cost and effort of preparing a holiday turkey is having turkey sandwiches, with dripping mustard, on home-make buns.
I don’t need a whole bird to have turkey sandwiches.
During the holidays my recollection takes a ride on the memory train to a place at the table of my motherin-law’s Kansas kitchen.
My first holiday meal there included something in a serving dish that was supposed to be “dressing.” It didn’t look right: Maybe something like crusty, over-done bread pudding. In taste it carried a heavy note of sage and pepper.
The dressing was made of white sandwich bread, not cornbread. That was just their way of doing things.
The next holiday, a whole year later, there was a small bowl of “southern” cornbread dressing placed in the center of the table near my place.
It was for me.
The Kansas Woman interviewed Uncle Rudy, the dressing maker for my mother’s side of the family, and nearly duplicated his formula.
Rudy tossed in things you’d think had no business in cornbread dressing but they worked really well together.
Everybody wanted a taste, or we in the south call a “moufful” (mouth full).
It was a hit!
Year by year the container of cornbread dressing grew in size while the bread dressing diminished until one year there was none there at all.
It isn’t the taste of the turkey dressing I remember but the tale of how the cornbread dressing slowly replaced that other stuff.
I have no business being at a table groaning with food. It only takes a few things to make me happy: turkey sandwiches, cranberry sauce, dressing, pink stuff, sweet tea.
It’s going to be easy.