My Trails into the Past

Like most American families, our Thanksgiving dinners were filled with traditional dishes. Besides the turkey, we had dressing, mashed potatoes, gravy, candied yams, peas with pearly onions, and pumpkin and pecan pies for dessert. All were prepared by my mother except the pies which were brought by my grandmother, Mam-ma, and my great-aunt, Bev. Since our family was large, my mother cooked a twenty-five pound or larger turkey, beginning the process about nine o’clock in the morning. The previous evening, she baked a batch of plain, unsweetened, cornbread in one of Nana’s large cast iron frying pans and hardboiled some eggs. On the day of Thanksgiving, she put together the cornbread dressing by first filling a bowl with cubed bread she purchased from Kilpatrick’s bread company that came with a seasoning packet. She added chopped onions, chopped celery, chopped parsley, and chopped hardboiled eggs. She then added melted butter and chicken or turkey broth to the consistency wanted. ...