Gobble, Gobble

As always, today's theme is breasts.  However, since this is a special Thanksgiving edition, I'm going to talk about my favorite kind of breasts...turkey!  Mom's in the kitchen right now whipping up a massive Thanksgiving feast, including a glorious-looking turkey that could rival one of Martha Stewart's birds.  I'm not really going to spend any time writing about actual turkey breasts, but rather something that I'm very thankful for every day, especially holidays.

I have a lot to be thankful for today, and could spend all day writing about all the blessings in my life.  I think, though, that today I'm going to focus on cooking.  A weird topic, you say?  Well, it's a general topic that has a lot of meaning to me.  In case you don't know, my family is full of great cooks.  Amazing cooks.  Male and female, every person in my family can cook.  We all learned how to cook, either directly or indirectly, from my Nannie Jean.  Nannie was one of those unique ladies who could do anything well.  I could, and probably will in the future, devote an entire post to Nannie, but today I want to focus on the cooking legacy that she left to her family.

Nannie was a fantastic cook, and her recipes have been featured in a couple nationally-published cookbooks.  The thing about Nannie though, was that she didn't actually measure anything.  Ever.  (Her recipes in those cookbooks were the first time any of us actually had a general measurement idea for her peach cobbler.)  She passed down her recipes to her daughters and son by showing them how to make things, rather than have them follow a recipe.  They learned at a very early age how to cook these amazing dishes, and did it by watching Nannie.  They, in turn, passed it down to their daughters and sons the same way.  Nannie had a wooden spoon that she used all the time, and I guarantee you that if you said, "one scoop in the wooden spoon," everyone of us would know exactly how much of that ingredient we would need.  

My family is very creative, and I think their artistic leanings make them even better cooks.  Cooking, especially without recipes, requires a little bit of creativity and flexibility.  Also, we all call each other all the time to get advice and help remembering things.  My mom and her sisters have been on the phone with each other several times this morning exchanging advice and tips about Thanksgiving dishes.  So, today, I'm thankful for the cooking legacy left to my family by my Nannie, and the closeness that we all share as a family, also left to us by my Nannie.  She loved all of us very much, and she never seemed happier than when her entire family was sitting at the table(s) eating a big meal that she had cooked with so much love.  

Happy Thanksgiving!!!