November 5, 2010- Family Trees and Recipes

     My third grader has been assigned to complete a family tree and to share a family recipe with his class for their annual ITTP (International Thanksgiving Tasting Party), and it has got me thinking about my family, and some of my favorite dishes served and eaten over the years.  Unfortunately, I don’t know as much about my ancestry as I would like, and I don’t have a large collection of ethnic family recipes, but what I do have is a very normal Southern United States upbringing, and a few very simple, but delicious deep South dishes that have served me and those I have shared meals with over the years pretty well, so this is what we will share with my son’s class, his Southern heritage and a popular Southern dish, “Sweet Potato Pie.”  This pie, or some might call it a casserole, is actually made with yams, and it took me until just a couple of years ago to realize that.  I always thought this orange colored potato looking vegetable was a sweet potato, and so did the rest of my family, I guess, because my little cousin, who is no longer little, always looked forward to eating that dish at Thanksgiving in my grandmother’s house, and she called it “Orange Pie.”  Either way, it’s yummy!

     When helping my son complete the family tree, I had to look back in the “Grandmother and Grandfather Remembers” scrapbooks I was fortunate enough to have three out of my four grandparents completed for me before they passed away. I am so proud of these books. The family history I do have is recorded in those books, and the parts that are most special to me are the memories shared, the stories told, and the pictures inside. These books reiterate to me how important it is to establish and maintain those family traditions and memory building experiences with my own boys as I discussed in the blog last night.  Nothing means more at the end of our days on this earth than quality time with family and the love shared through our traditions and lives together.  It’s the perfect topic for this month because it’s a time to be truly thankful for what we have instead of what we don’t.  And right this very moment, I’m happy it’s Friday night, and that tomorrow I will be with those I love as much if not more than anyone in the world on a beautiful tropical atoll in the most amazing ocean in the world making memories to last a lifetime!