November Already!

Fall is marching rapidly on--I'm shocked that it's already the 2nd full week of November!

My husband's computer just bit the dust, so we're reduced to using my 7-year-old laptop...but we're grateful it still works and is fairly speedy online.

Anyway, I've already planned out my Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners because I love food and I enjoy cooking for the holidays and having a meal plan that works together. And it's so much fun to cook holiday meals!!! I'm especially excited about using my new holiday cookie cutters this year :)

It will be so nice to be home this year for the holidays, after spending time with both families over Christmas last year, in two different states (neither of which happen to be our state!) Lots and lots of driving and cramming things in and in-laws. This year, just us, the dog, and the fireplace. Lovely!!

My favorite holiday memories center around cooking. Every year as a girl, I would make noodles with granny for Thanksgiving & Christmas. We'd also bake pies together, put together casseroles, and make other specific-to-the-holidays desserts like Cherry Christmas Cake, Oatmeal Orange Spice Cookies, Carrot Cookies with orange icing, etc... No one else in the family was allowed in the kitchen with her (unless they were the clean up crew doing dishes) We kept up that tradition until I moved out of state about 4 years ago.

I can finally make the noodles myself (there was no recipe, just all in granny's head!) and can now make any of our holiday desserts on my own, something nobody else in the family can claim. I studied her recipes and her methods (just a pinch of this, a dash of that, a few eggs...) and loved having that one-on-one time with her in the kitchen, bonding together over cooking, singing as we worked, or telling jokes, or listening to stories from before I was born about her life. Messes were expected ("A messy kitchen is the sign of a good cook") and laughter was the norm, no matter what happened in the kitchen.

Thanksgiving this year will mark almost a year exactly that granny has been gone, and I'm sure this first holiday season without her will be bittersweet. I'll take pride in the fact that I can honor her memory by recreating some of our favorite holiday recipes, and stop and remember all the good times we shared in the kitchen for all those years. I'm thrilled that I can share those dishes with my husband; that they won't die with her, but are something I can pass on to others, and share the joy & love that cooking together meant.

Writing this, I'm flooded with memories--looking like ghosts because we're covered in flour from making noodles, kicking my uncle out of the kitchen for snacking on our ingredients, having my own special cherry pie she'd baked just for me when all the rest of the family loved apple and pumpkin, going down to the cellar to grab fruit preserves or homemade dill pickles we'd done the summer before, laughing at our own private jokes, the bun song--so many things that just we two shared over the course of nearly 28 years in the kitchen together.

I will miss her presence this year, but I look forward to remembering her and sharing our creations (and a little bit of her) with others.

Thanks for reading! :)