Yep, that's me! I'm giving it a shot! Being the 7th daughter, I didn't have to cook that much especially on the holidays. My mom was a great cook and use to cooking for 13 kids, neices and nephews, cousins, aunts and uncles, and any other kids that didn't have food. She would stay up all night cooking. I remember the smells coming through the house while I lay in bed. If mom didn't feel like cooking, which was rare, my older sisters cooked. When I left home, I think I tried to cook one or two holiday dinners before becoming a Jehovah's Witness. After that, I didn't cook big meals.
The family always gathered over to one of my older sister's homes for Thanksgiving. Mom always cooked the turkey and dressing and chitlins! She always made the sweet potato pie and green's. Each of the girls would bring one of Mom's favorite dishes. One sister made a killer baked macaroni and cheese from scratch, another made this cake that is a family recipe which we all loved. Mom loved my salads. I would make a huge tossed salad and top it with sliced boiled eggs, cheese, and turkey or ham chunks; and I'd bring all the various salad dressings from Blue Cheese to Ranch. Of course, there was many other tasty dishes; but those that I mentioned were the mainstay.
Last year, Mom died in November. No one in the family celebrated Thanksgiving. I wasn't going to do anything today; but my youngest daughter was acting depressed about it. I know that I can't bake a turkey and make dressing like my mothers; so I'm not even going to try! I had a roasting hen in the refrigerator and some neck bones. I pulled those out. I sent my daughter to get some chitlins.
I put the hen on the rotisserie this morning and I cleaned the chitlins; and they are now cooking in the pressure cooker! Once those are done, I'm putting on the neck bones. I'm not going to have fresh greens; but I learned a trick from my Big Mom (adopted grandmother) on how to make canned greens taste like the greens are freshly cooked greens. I'm going to use Stove Top stuffing to make a dressing. My mom taught me how to mix a few things in it to get it be dressing. I'm going to use a boxed macaroni and cheese, but I'll mix in some Velveeta to get it to be creamier. There's no way in the world that I can make a sweet potato pie like mom's! I have a store bought pumpkin pie. My husband doesn't like candied yams, but he loves baked sweet potatoes; so we'll have some of those. I'm not going to make the salad. . .
We'll have some rolls and cornbread muffins. My oldest daughter has the recipe for the cake and she has got it down to a science! She loves to bake cakes! I, absolutely, hate cranberry sauce; so we won't be having any of that!
I haven't felt like cooking for months. Since, I couldn't sleep this morning, I took my Provigil so that I would stay up during the day (I have a restricted airway due to paralysis of one of my vocal cords.).
Hopefully, my dinner won't turn out like "Chevy Chase's Christmas Vacation" dinner! Remember the turkey disintegrated into dust! And there was catnip in the jello!
I have plenty of insulin! So if it turns out good, I'm going to eat like it was Mom's food!
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
You done done it now!