The salivation begins

For the second time in my life I’m actually contributing a tiny something to a Thanksgiving feast. I’ve spent nearly all my Thanksgivings as an adult at Rob’s grandparents’ house in Marietta, Georgia, where this year about 10 of us – if you include nursing Owen, who feasts in his own tangential way – will gather and overfill our bellies. For most of those Thanksgivings Rob’s grandmothers have supplied the entire meal straight from their kitchens. Now that one of those grandmothers is in an assisted living facility, the younger generation has finally started contributing just a bit.

Still spry ol' Granny, who’s in her late 80s now, will cook up much of the meal. She’s one of those fabulous cooks whose magical recipes are all “a little bit of this, a pinch of that, pour in some of this and voila! – DELICIOUSNESS.” To date all of us younger, less seasoned cooks have failed to master her dishes. So she’s still doing her famous green beans, mac ‘n’ cheese, creamed potatoes and stuffing.

My contribution’s puny in comparison: just an old fashioned pumpkin pie and some made-from-scratch cornmeal muffins. But it made for a nice morning at home with the boys, anticipating the feast. I managed to make the pie crust unassisted while Will concocted his own pumpkin pie with puzzle pieces as the chief ingredient.

Together we whipped up the pie filling and the cornbread muffin ingredients and Will enjoyed some quality time with his favorite kitchen tool: a hand-held beater.

“I like to beat,” he said. To avoid mass spillage, we let him do some of the "cooking" in the sink.

As we poured some evaporated milk into our pie filling concoction, he announced: “Cows come from milk.” I thought about it a minute and decided he was partially correct.

After our cooking session, Will decided it would only be right to eat a cornmeal muffin for lunch, so we counted our muffins and our feasters tomorrow and decided we could spare one muffin. I served it up still warm with the requested sides – a piece of deli turkey laid over it like a blanket and some grated Swiss cheese all around.