Wordless Wednesday: Thanksgiving

 

Happy Thanksgiving

 

Wordless Wednesday: Turkey Time

Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone

Saturday Night Challenge- Thanksgiving Memory

From Randy Seaver's GeneaMusings: Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music, please!):

1) We just celebrated Thanksgiving in the USA, and many of us have celebrated it every year for decades.  For this SNGF, please share a favorite Thanksgiving memory - it can be sentimental, humorous, reflective, etc.

A favorite Thanksgiving memory of mine is one that occurred in February. Yes, February.

It started one fall when I was sick with many autoimmune problems. I was on a strict diet during that time due to complications. How strict you might ask? Well, I could eat anything I wanted to in moderation—as long as it was liquid. Yes, a liquids only diet.

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite, if not my favorite holiday of the year. I look forward to that turkey dinner with all the trimmings. These are some of my favorite foods and I don’t get to eat them very often. So, you can imagine how I felt about missing out on Thanksgiving dinner.

Even though Mom was never a fan of turkey, she understood how I felt. Her and I hatched a plan. We bought a turkey breast as usual along with cranberries. These went into the freezer and there they stayed.

In February after I had been able to have surgery to correct the complications and was recovered enough to eat a large meal, we defrosted that turkey. On a Thursday evening in early February, Mom, my brother, my sister-in-law and I gathered and had my Thanksgiving Dinner that I had missed at the traditional time. As I think back on that difficult season, I have memories of that evening and how my family were willing to help out to make things better for me, not only that night, but throughout my struggles with chronic disease.   

Thanksgiving

Some views of our table yesterday.

 A traditional Thanksgiving meal even if it was just for two of us this year. This is the first year that I've hosted Thanksgiving dinner in my own home. Usually, I would prepare it ahead of time and take it to Mom's house to finish cooking and put on her table. However, it is not the first year that this table has held the dinner on Thanksgiving Day. Originally, this table sat in my parents' kitchen at the old farmhouse. On a few holidays when there was just a small number of us, we would gather around this table to eat rather than in the more formal dining room.

Did I say originally? Not quite. Mom brought this table home after her father died. He had bought the table at an auction many years before and refinished it to put in their dining room. Their family had used it for many, many years. A number of holiday meals, including Thanksgiving were held around that table when it was part of the Wooster family. In fact, Mom had told me stories about some little children hiding under the tablecloths of this table and sitting on the legs that fan out from the middle. While sitting there, they could listen in secret to the adult conversations in the dining room. Who were these children? While there probably were multiple ones over the years, the ones that Mom talked about were one or more of her brothers and herself!

This table has been in our family for close to a hundred years at this point as it probably was sometime in the 1920s that Grandpa, Marion Wooster, bought the table at auction. However, it was used then, and we have no idea of how old it actually is or the history before it came to him. Probably a lot more holiday dinners, especially since, if I had the room, there are more leaves I could put in the table and expand it even more for a larger crowd to easily gather around it.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!  * With thanks to Charles Schultz for the picture.

Saturday Challenge- Thanksgiving Edition

From Randy Seaver's GeneaMusings: Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music, please!):

1) This is a fun meme co-hosted by McGuffy's Reader and 15 and Meowing (thanks to Suzanne McClendon on the P.S. Annie blog for the links).

2)  Fill in the blanks for these four statements:

1. One Thanksgiving tradition I have is __________________________.
2. Black Friday ______________________________________________.
3. The best part about Thanksgiving Day is _______________________.
4. One Thanksgiving, _________________________________________.

Here's mine:

1. One Thanksgiving tradition I have is a dinner at noontime with turkey, stuffing (or dressing whichever you like to call it), cranberry sauce, potatoes- either mashed or sweet potato casserole, a vegetable and a special salad.

The salad came from a Pillsbury Cook-off cookbook in the early 70’s and was originally called “Lime Party Salad.” I have the book from Mom’s collection. We’ve modified it over the years and it is now often called “The Pink Salad.” Instead of lime Jell-O that the original called for, I usually make it with cherry or raspberry Jell-O. Mixed with marshmallows, cream cheese, pineapple and Cool Whip, it isn’t the healthiest of food, but has appeared on my family’s holiday tables for almost every holiday since it was first made by Mom way back when the cookbook was new.

2. Black Friday is a day that I stay away from stores, especially the mall. I hate crowds and I am not particularly fond of shopping. It marks the day that I try to stay away from retail establishments as much as possible from then until after Christmas. Instead, I usually stay home and relax, catch up on reading, genealogy or a craft project—or all of the above!

3. The best part about Thanksgiving Day is the meal. This menu is one of my favorite meals of all time, so of course I love sitting down to eating it!

4. One Thanksgiving, when I was a teenager, my Mom wasn’t feeling too well. She had recently had surgery on either a foot or a hand, I forget what exactly. The surgery was either the week before, or maybe even early that week. Whenever it was, she was definitely still in recovery from that. It was a quiet Thanksgiving with just my parents and I, but she was determined to make our usual meal. When everything was simmering away on the stove and didn’t need much attending for a while, I promised to keep an eye on things and not let anything burn. I was a good assistant, but still not skilled in cooking on my own yet. She went in the living room and lay down on the couch to rest. When I went to wake her, she started to get up quick in a panic because she had been sleeping and it was time dinner should be ready. I told her to relax, I needed her to do just one thing- come sit down with Dad and I and eat. I had managed to finish preparing the meal on my own with help from Dad getting things and carrying the food to the table for me. It was then that Mom started trusting my cooking skills a bit more.