I think a plate of left over turkey and stuffing is perhaps the finest meal of the fall season. It’s a reward for a day spent cooking that allows the cook to enjoy their own work in a way they cannot on Thanksgiving Day.
Our dinner yesterday was terrific. All the standards were on the table. Eighteen pounds of turkey, two large bowls of stuffing one cooked in the bird the other in a baking dish, mashed potatoes, my son-in-law’s home made green bean casserole, biscuits, gravy and a greek vegetable salad. For dessert there were three kinds of pumpkin pie. Pie is quite important to my family.
It’s not Thanksgiving without my Aunt Millie’s pumpkin chiffon pie. When I was newly married she taught me to make it and now my children are making it as well. About five years ago that pie and our love of all pies spawned Dessert Wars! Each year all of my three children claimed to make the best pie and did! Their pie making was out of control. They weren’t just making pumpkin chiffon anymore but also pumpkin cheese cake and pumpkin walnut too. After every Thanksgiving dinner I was expected to try and as evenly as possible praise each pie.
I wasn’t Mom anymore I became a negotiator. Our Dessert Wars were making my waistline expand as well as forcing me to attempt to be neutral in the wars (something not easily done) and I had to do something! The dessert table wasn’t big enough for nine plus pies and neither was my tummy. No more nine pie Thanksgivings I told them. It was time to call a truce in Dessert Wars….but how?
Calls were exchanged each child trying to win support for their pie making in order to secure the coveted position of Thanksgiving pie maker. They called each other pleading their case. Who was the best pie maker was just one bit of the conversation. Time, cost, children, ease of transporting the pie…all these things were discussed with seriousness and humor in an effort to gain concessions from the other.
Finally it was decided my middle daughter Rebecca would make the pie this year but only if her older sister Lijana could bring her pies to Christmas dinner. My son Seth upon hearing of this agreement told me none of that matter; he too would make pie. I still had work to do. I needed a different approach though. How could I dissuade him from making pie too? I decided on a strategy. I would lavish praise on his cooking skills and suggest that he might make the best mashed potatoes in the family.
It worked! We were down to just three pies. Now, here I am enjoying our leftovers and the last slice of pie. It’s not just pie though. It’s a lifetime of memories, it’s our families silly competitive nature, it’s humor and seriousness, it’s those hours we spent in the kitchen and over the dinner table, it’s those of us who are no longer with us at the table but who will forever be with us in our hearts….it is all the things that we are thankful for.
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