the not lost recipes

The house smells like lemon zest, cinnamon and fresh thyme. All with undertones of butter and apples. If there were a perfume called Thanksgiving , this is what it would smell like. Why anyone would wear it, is a whole other matter.

Somehow focusing on the cooking helped me to calm down. Remembering that my grandmother went through all the trouble of making that stuffing every year, even though she didn't like it herself. Thinking of how my father (if he still breathes) probably misses his mother's cooking. Does he even know that I know how to recreate her dish? He would probably fall over and die if he knew I could make Great Aunt Margie's potato salad.

My Great Aunt Margie was actually my mother's aunt. She was my mother's father's sister. But she lived upstairs from my paternal grandmother (of the stuffing) for many years with her husband until they all in rather quick succession passed away. While she lived there, she was always cooking, even though the attic apartment didn't have much of a kitchen. She would send down potato salad in the late summer evenings, and by morning, it would be gone.

I remember coming home one summer and telling my Mom about the potato salad. My Mom remembered it from her childhood. She told me that the next summer, I would need to learn how to make it. And the next summer I did just that. I sat and watched my Great Aunt work her magic. That is another of those recipes that can't really be written down. It is a little of this, and a little of that. Plus there is just so much love that goes into it, that you can't just copy it.

They had some amazing looking red potatoes at Whole Foods. As I was picking out sweet potatoes, we talked about making my Aunt Margie's world famous potato salad instead of mashed potatoes. But mashed potatoes just seem essential to the Thanksgiving menu. Maybe for Christmas. Although it would be perfect with a turkey sandwich.

The turkey sandwich started with my Mother. She would buy Kaiser rolls with poppy seeds from a local Jewish deli and save them just for this purpose. Around 10pm on Thanksgiving night, she would go out into the kitchen (which was usually still looking like a disaster area) and start making a sandwich. She would grab out the Hellman's and layer on turkey and cranberry sauce, and a little bit of stuffing, which was warmed up a bit in the microwave. Sometimes we would share it; sometimes she would make me my own. She always said that a sandwich always tasted better when someone else made it just for you. That is so true.

on the night stand :: Martha Stewart Living Cookbook : The New Classics