Thanksgiving remembrances
Ijust finished the last of our 22-pound Thanksgiving turkey. We are a family that has always divided up the leftovers to take home to enjoy the next day and maybe the day after. Leftover turkey was what everyone wanted.
Well, except my husband. He doesn’t eat fowl. I think it was because of the demise of a pet duck name Hortense that some of you may have read about in last week’s column.
Dressing follows, along with sweet potato souffle’, green bean and corn casserole, a few rolls and some desserts. I had to laugh at my grandson Hatcher’s reaction to one of my turkey cookies. It was a tad misshapen and he said, “Grammy, this is not a turkey. It is a duck. Look at its beak.”
I told him its name was Hortense. My son-in-law Will said the sweetest thing to me. He asked almost first thing if I had made turkey cookies. They are really a handed down recipe of my mother’s butter/sugar cookies that I use for Thanksgiving and Christmas cookies. I was getting ready to do that when he, Heather, and their kids came through the door.
When I pulled the first batch out of the oven and handed him the first warm one.
“Now it’s Thanksgiving, Miss Coleen,” he said.
That warmed my heart. He’s a wonderful young man.
When I was a kid, my Thanksgivings were generally spent with my daddy, mama, sister and brother. Sometimes friends would come to enjoy the Thanksgiving bounty with us. I grew up as an Air Force brat. We traveled to a new location every three years. Most times it was far away from relatives, so we enjoyed our own family togetherness on the holidays.
We were never lonely. Military kids are a unique bunch. We’d make friends quickly because we knew that in a few years, we’d be moving on. Mom and Dad always prepared the Thanksgiving dinner together. They enjoyed working together during the holidays. Both were good cooks. Daddy did up the hen (he did not like turkey), cornbread dressing and gravy while Mom did desserts, including the cookies from the recipe she handed down to me. They both fixed vegetables, and we always had brown-and-serve rolls.
To me, it was a meal fit for royalty. When we lived in Kansas, Mom and Dad made a special friendship with an older couple we called Mr. and Mrs. Anthony. We kids just loved them. They were our grandparents-away-from-home grandparents and they always spent Thanksgiving with us. When I think of them now, I picture Fred and Ethel Mertz of “I Love Lucy” fame. I know they made us laugh a lot.
This was the time of year when my sister and I looked forward to packages from Tennessee and New York. In Tennessee our Aunt Eunice made the family her famous teacake cookies. She’d box them up and send them to us for Thanksgiving and Christmas. I can still remember their distinct taste ... so rich, wonderfully flavorful. I’m not sure what she added to make them taste so good. In fact, I’ve tried through the years to duplicate them but I have never quite been able to do it. She has been gone a long time and alas, with her, the recipe for those teacakes.
We also looked forward to getting a big box from New York City. My grandfather was the accountant for Coty Cosmetics in New York and he would send us all kinds of samples of lipsticks, perfumes, creams, nail polish and anything else two young girls would want along with our mom. I remember my sister always liked red lipstick. Daddy would laugh and say, “You can see her lips before you see her!” I remember I loved the smell of Emeraude perfume. I still do, only I just don’t wear perfume much anymore. Maybe I’ll start wearing it again.
When Daddy retired from the Air Force at the ripe old age of 37 we moved to East Tennessee close to where he grew up. For the first time ever, we ate Thanksgiving dinner at my Grandma Emert’s. Lots of people were there.
Daddy had 10 brothers and sisters, so you can imagine. It was pretty glorious because everyone brought something delicious ... mostly.
One time a cousin brought a wild turkey he had shot and baked. I gotta tell ya, it was gawdawful. I remember Daddy got tickled when people started shoving their pieces of turkey into the garbage. Truly, it was inedible, but my sweet mama did not want to be rude. She drank lots of tea to wash it down.
I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. Now it’s onto to Christmas and Santa.