It was the best Thanksgiving weekend! Really. We ate the same foods at the same places with the same people and the same traditions, but something about it was just extra good. Mississippi State beating Ole Miss certainly didn’t hurt, but that wasn’t it. It was just sweet. There was one new thing. In my 54 years, this was the first year that food assignments were given out for Thanksgiving. I’m not talking about ice and cups and rolls. I’m talking real assignments. Not that we, the “next generation,” haven’t ever offered, but we’ve never been taken up on it. We can only speculate on the reason. Well, this was our year. After 54 years of coming in with nothing but our purses, we were called up for service. It was like the draft and we reported for duty. 

I was to bring sweet potato casserole and butter beans. For 43 people. Nothing like throwing us in the deep end to see what would happen. I’m use to cooking for four people and, most recently, two. How does one estimate how many sweet potatoes to peel for 43? What is the equation for figuring out how many butter beans 43 people can eat? I just don’t deal in such large increments in the kitchen. But, sticking with my belief that I’d rather have too much than not enough, I got pretty close on the sweet potatoes, but I overshot the butter beans by about 39 servings.

I do think the “next generation” nailed our first attempt at Thanksgiving assistance. No hospitalizations for food-borne illness were reported so yay for us. I’m pretty confident in my basic, weekday culinary skills, but something about cooking for Thanksgiving had me guessing, second-guessing, calling Mama, looking on Pinterest, and googling. I mean, nobody wants to be the generation that drops the Thanksgiving baton. If my grandmother, mother, and aunt hadn’t set and maintained the bar at such mouth-watering heights, it wouldn’t be so unnerving. The real test comes when we inherit the making of the dressing and the caramel cake, but I can’t even think about that yet.