The word "tradition" literally means to hand over for safekeeping. I always thought of my grandmother as the keeper of the traditions, and I guess as the matriarch of my family, she was. I've tried to keep them as she would have--represented by the linens and laces, the porcelains and ceramics, the silver and gold, the furniture and art, and all the funny little knick knacks she loved and I can't let go of. These artifacts carry the stories and the traditions of my family. Even my fascination with genealogy is a tradition! But, each year they seem to fade more and more. Whether it's from fading interest or time just moving forward, age and less tenacious hold on memories, the traditions become fewer and farther afield.
Thanksgiving is one of the few traditions that I still cling to. I still make the stuffing and cook the turkey just the way my grandmother did, and I can only imagine that it was just the way her mother did before her. In my blog post called "Ode to a Bowl" I talk about how the bread bowl that my great-grandmother used became the bowl that my grandmother used to make stuffing. I used that same bowl to make stuffing until it got broken. I still have all the pieces; maybe one day I'll get them all glued back together. I still make mashed potatoes from scratch. I still have sweet potatoes, but my time living in the south has inspired me to change them up a bit from the "ice cream cones" my grandfather used to fix up for my six-year-old self. Green beans must always be frozen french-cut and cooked with cream of mushroom soup. And I must not forget the ambrosia salad, though now I pair it with my husband's traditional "green stuff" (pistachio pudding mix, cool whip and pineapple chunks). I believe she was the first to use packaged brown-and-serve rolls, and I see no reason to change that.
Where I deviate from her tradition--and have made it my own--is with the cranberry sauce. My grandmother loved canned cranberry sauce, without whole berries. And I'll bet that her mother embraced the Ocean Spray progressiveness in the 1930s. Shunning any kind of show, my grandmother cut out the two ends of the can and let the whole mold slide onto the serving plate. For some reason, I hated seeing the can shape jiggling all the way to the table. So, I make cranberry sauce, with whole berries, from scratch.
My grandmother's house was always full of people at Thanksgiving. Her two daughters, their husbands and kids, her sisters and their families. So many that they couldn't all fit at the dining room table, even with both leaves inserted. So, as had always been the tradition, the kids ate in the kitchen. My mother likes to tell the story of one Thanksgiving when she, as the youngest, had to bear the brutality and torture that the older kids typically inflict on the younger. During this one Thanksgiving, a food fight broke out and peas went flying everywhere. When the noise interrupted the adults' eating in the dining room, my grandfather was compelled to get up and go into the kitchen to remind the children of their manners. Before my mother realized what was about to happen, her sister and cousins were putting all the blame on her. She says she was, as usual, the only one to get into trouble for the incident. I, too, like to have a house full of people for Thanksgiving, but there is no special table for the kids. Since this IS the only day of the year I claim to cook, I like to do it right. It makes for a long day, but one I get so much satisfaction from that it that wouldn't matter if no one showed up, I'd still do up the whole event just as I always have.
This year I decided to send out invitations. I don't know, maybe this is the start of a new tradition. I get out all the old dishes, some of those antique knick knacks, and I am just overcome with contentment. Last year it occurred to me that I didn't have any written recipes for my grandmother's Thanksgiving feast, and that perhaps it was time to put together a holiday cookbook/photobook/genealogy in order to arrest the fading of my family's traditions. So here's this year's photo to start it off. The water pitcher is empty. The colors of the pickle and olive tray are faded. And the hollow gourds are but memories of pumpkins. But the food will always bring everything rushing back.
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