As brides celebrate their first Thanksgivings with real responsibility for cooking a feast for a dozen or more relatives, panic may set in. The solution for some is to call Mom to ride in and take the reins while others have to rely on telephone help. When I was a young bride 800 miles from home, fixing my first Thanksgiving dinner on my own, I quickly realized I had undertaken more than I expected. I had shopped for all the ingredients and had written out a menu but I soon found I was not really prepared. Only with experience can we appreciate the delicate interdependencies of successfully putting a Thanksgiving dinner on the table.
In my naiveté I thought I could duplicate Mom’s Thanksgiving turkey with Grandma’s dressing recipe by having watched, and helped Mom all those holidays before. How wrong I was. That first Thanksgiving on my own I called my mother dozens of times the night before and the morning of Thanksgiving with questions I had never thought to ask when I was standing in her kitchen helping her chop or stir. I can still hear Mom's patient voice as she dictated from memory her mother's dressing recipe to me over the phone. I’m not sure anyone in the family had written it down before that night. It had just been handed down from mother to daughter across the generations. Not being a great cook, myself, I knew I needed the written word, so I grabbed some notebook paper and scribbled her words of wisdom that came over the phone from 800 long miles away.
Now every Thanksgiving I pull out that piece of notebook paper from my seldom used recipe box to make Grandma’s oyster dressing. It gets easier every year and I have to refer to the notes less frequently now, but it’s comforting to know that even though I no longer have Mom or Grandma to call, I do have their precious recipe.
My niece just moved to Australia and via the wonders of Facebook she conveyed she was trying to put together a Thanksgiving feast for her new Aussie friends and family. She wanted to include her great-grandmother’s oyster dressing. I decided it was time to retire the notebook paper so I finally typed up the recipe. I posted it on my Apron Flings website so no matter where in the world members of my family may be this Thanksgiving, we can still share the tradition of Grandma's oyster dressing. To read or print Grandma Irion’s famous smoked oyster dressing recipe, click here. Since I learned the hard way, the recipe contains helpful hints and suggestions for stress free preparation.
So new brides, carry on family traditions via Facebook, Skype, Twitter or the old-fashioned telephone. Just know that no matter where life’s journey takes you this Thanksgiving, be thankful for traditions that join us together. Happy Thanksgiving from Houston, wherever you may be.
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