A little background

My parents lived through the great depression and as such our pantry was always loaded with food and staples. My dad served in the Navy and my Mom was an RN. I’m the youngest of 4 children and when Mom would go to the military commissary (grocery store) which was not very close to home, she would always buy in bulk which meant we usually had 2 shopping carts full of food at checkout.

One of the items that she would buy in bulk was milk, now you would think that the milk would go bad before we used it all, but she had a little trick, she would freeze the milk and when she needed it later, she would thaw it and mix it with powdered milk to make it last longer.

I always wondered how anyone could drink that nasty milk not realizing the “milk” I was drinking growing up really wasn’t the real thing!

I also never remember going out to dinner growing up, we would have dinner at home every night. We would all sit around the kitchen table night after night waiting for someone to spill their drink so we could get down to eating! True story, we had a drink accident almost nightly!

My kitchen is one of the most important areas of my home, you could say it’s my “happy place”. It’s where I can get lost in creating something that will sure to please my family and any guests we have over. I enjoy being able to take something ordinary and make something extraordinary by adding just a few flavorful ingredients.

As you can probably tell by now, food and my family are extremely important to me and I was so excited that I was able to host our first Thanksgiving dinner in our new home last year.

My 90 year old Mother and my middle sister were able to visit so it was extra special. It was a bummer that my sons and their wives weren’t able to make it but I am hoping next year we will all be together once again.

By the way, I had a new menu item last year that will be on the Thanksgiving menu going forward and that was purple sweet potato casserole, which my Mom loved and called it the purple people eater. I think I will share that recipe and name it like Mom did.

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