Time for Noodles

Good morning everybody.....all three of you.  Well, it is coming and coming fast whether you like it or not and will come in this order they say.  WINTER, and THANKSGIVING.  Oh they tell us that it is going to be COLD day this coming Friday, day after tomorrow, even though it will be 65 today and 70 tomorrow.  So, I guess we ought to get prepared, but really??, what is there to do to prepare for a 34 degree day?  Not much so I will skip right on over to Thanksgiving.  Hmmm, maybe I should go grocery shopping on Friday.............maybe there won't be that many folks out.

I have no idea what to fix for Thanksgiving this year.  We will probably have our usual fare, turkey and dressing and gravy, mashed potatoes for Steven (none of those garlicky fancy ones either - plain ole potatoes with butter, a dash of milk, and salt - don't even bother with pepper), candied sweet potatoes (Mrs. Tucker's claim to fame with my kids), green beans (again plain is better for my family), and last but not least, my dumplings.  Now we can fill in the holes on the table with all the other kinds of vegetables and sides, some being new recipes, to be announced at a later date.  Doesn't everybody have 17 side dishes???????

I don't think I have ever gone through Thanksgiving week without thinking of Grandma Dawkins.  Can you tell how special this woman was/is to me?  A few days before Thanksgiving, you would find tea towels placed just so with rows of noodles drying on her bed or over the back of a dining chair. 

I have so many food memories centering around Grandma; everything from fried perch only 4 inches long (which were caught just a few minutes ago) to her cookies which were always in that apple cookie jar, Sunday night popcorn to sugared bread.  But maybe one of my favorites was her noodles.  They represented more than a food, they meant that there was a special day coming soon.  Soon her tiny house would be filled wall to wall with my aunts and uncles and cousins.  Memories.

So soon my house will be filled with aunts and uncles and cousins...........  Memories.  Let me be the first to wish you and your family, moms and dads, brothers and sisters, children and grandchildren, even aunts and uncles and cousins included, a Happy Thankgiving, with or without snow!

Time for noodles.

I love you.  A Thompson Thanksgiving coming soon.