November 27, 2014 ~ HAPPY THANKSGIVING !! Today I am thankful for childhood memories of Thanksgiving. For those of you who may not already know, I was raised by my grandparents. Sadly, my grandpa passed away when I was in 7th grade and my grandma passed when I a senior in high school. I am truly thankful to have wonderful memories of both of them 🙂
I’m a morning person, so I’m an early riser by nature. I have wonderful memories of waking up on Thanksgiving morning to the wonderful smells of onion and celery sauteing in butter on the stove … the starting point of my grandma’s wonderful stuffing recipe.
My grandma made the best stuffing (in my humble opinion). It was fairly simple, but made with loving hands. I remember we would lay all the bread out on cookie sheets the day before so it would dry out and get crunchy. On thanksgiving morning, while the onions and celery were cooking, I got to help with the bread. After drying out, we would then soak it in watered down carnation canned milk and then squeeze and squish out most of the milk. I still remember the feeling of it squishing through my fingers into the bowl. Then, in went the onion/butter mixture with plenty of sage and poultry seasoning (this obviously isn’t the exact recipe – just childhood memories ). I remember mixing it all together by hand. Grandma used to say it was like making a bread meatloaf 🙂 I got to try to hold the turkey still while she put the stuffing in … he sure was a slippery old thing. Such good times !
I have lots of great memories of my Grandma, but they seem to surface the most around the Holidays … miss you Gram <3