Cooking too much

My mom and I cooked the family Thanksgiving meal for our family yesterday. And quite frankly, we cooked far too much food.

We seem to have an ingrained fear of running out of food at any gathering we are hosting. So we tend to cook way more than we need. I mean a ridiculous amount of food.

We don’t let the extra food go to waste though. We freeze leftovers. And share plates of food with less fortunate people in our community. We find creative ways to use leftovers on the days following a gathering.

I was reminded of the Thanksgivings of my childhood. Most Thanksgiving meals were spent at my parent’s house where my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins all gathered to eat with us. My grandmother carried along the family tradition of cooking ridiculous amounts of food.

I remember my grandmother and grandfather coming slowly down the long driveway to our house on Thanksgiving day in their pale green 1963 Ford truck. They would get out of the truck and go around to open the tailgate. There in the bed of the truck was boxes and boxes of food that my grandmother had spent days cooking. Every kind of pie imaginable. Vegetables. Dressing. Biscuits. Cornbread. Pickles.

But that wasn’t all of the food. My mom cooked vast quantities of food as did my other relatives. The food table at our house would be simply groaning with good Southern cooking. I think my favorites were always my grandmother’s sweet potato pie with marshmallows baked on top and my mom’s homemade cranberry sauce.

When I was a child my Thanksgivings were always held in the same place with pretty much the same people. But now, we celebrate Thanksgiving with Danny’s family sometimes and my family sometimes. And a couple of times we’ve just celebrated with our friends instead of family because we were too far away from family. But no matter where we celebrate this holiday, I always try to include my mom’s homemade cranberry sauce.

We must have some traditions each and every year!