By Shannon Williams
Well, we have made it through a very different Thanksgiving for many of us. I hope that the changes we made will slow the spread down in the coming weeks. I also hope that you were able to find a way to give thanks for all we have, even with all we have lost in the past months. Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays, as it is really just about family and being grateful. I have shared big thanksgivings with many people, and ones with only two, and everything in between. I have spent it cooking at a community-feeding event, cooked all the old favorite, and along the way every now and then trying a new dish.

I worked hard on my turkey cooking skills over the years, so I am usually the one who ends up cooking the turkey, which I really don’t mind. But it is the side dishes that get me; do you stay with the old tried and true, or branch out and try news ones? We all have our special dishes that we only eat on Thanksgiving and it would not seem right to have it without those.

As your family gets bigger, you have to consider more people-special dishes, and most of all, heaven forbid, you have family from both sides of the fence. By that, I mean the age-old cornbread dressing or bread stuffing? I had to learn how to cook cornbread dressing as an adult as I grew up in a bread stuffing family. Do not hate me, I now could not dream of a Thanksgiving meal without cornbread dressing! So I end up making lots of sides and pies for everyone’s special dish. Each year, I do try to add a new dish in the mix; this year it was sweet potato bites. The family member who loves sweet potatoes was not going to be present, so I did not need to make sweet potatoes, but I wanted at least the taste. Well all was going well, until it dawned on me that I was going to need to use the broiler at the same time as the oven! I had it all down as to what would go in when and what I could cook together due to like oven temperatures, but turning the broiler on was not in the plan! So it really was a bomb! And it was nothing anyone raved about.

Now that I look at it, the new dish is never anyone’s favorite. I need to make a note to myself to not worry about a new dish, all they want is the old ones and, after all, is that not what thanksgiving is about, just feeling those old feelings that make us feel good, with those we love and remember we have so much to be thankful for.

[Nov-30-2020]