I woke up about 4:30 to the sound of Nellie whining at the back door. It was cold – 20 degrees – and I guess she thought she should be inside with the rest of us humans. She can open her gate and will do so if the stress of circumstances so dictates. She has a light in her house and plenty of fresh shavings, but it evidently wasn’t enough to keep her cozy this morning.
Since I was up, I stayed up. I made the Dr. Pepper salad and began to prepare the turkey for roasting -- my job since Daddy left us 20 years ago. This is the first year I haven’t stuffed the turkey, Harriet having convinced me that a packaged mix heated in the crockpot is the way to go. But – I discovered I didn’t have any turkey roasting bags on hand, and using the bag really does cut the roasting time and make the mess easier to handle. So Mike made an early trip to Family Foods to get some, which I appreciated.
Great Aunt Bertha writes to her sister, Ida Patchen, from the Gilbert homeplace, 1935: “What a time you all had on Thanksgiving and what a big dinner. Mine didn’t come up to it – only we had pork cake and squash pie, too." Pork cake was Great-grandmother Dickson’s recipe – a fruit cake made with plenty of lard.
I wish I could quietly visit each one of you this morning and see what’s happening with you. I wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving.
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