Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Christmas gets all the press, and if you ask Vertis, she'll tell you I overdo Christmas with trying to hang lights and garlands on everything that's not moving.
She even has a rule: "No Christmas music until after we finish Thanksgiving dinner." And as the Thanksgiving dishes are being washed the first Christmas carols begin to play.
Still, there is something about Thanksgiving that makes me relax and smile. Although the south Arkansas leaves are fading by the end of November, the white oaks are still a soft red, and the humidity is down, which makes the sky seem bluer. Algae is gone from the ponds, and ducks and geese pass over our house, heading south. These are magical days that make living in the South such a pleasure.
But my real reason for liking Thanksgiving has to do with family. For years my mother and Vertis' mother teamed up to prepare Thanksgiving dinner, and the spread made me really thankful for family, friends, and the bounty of our wonderful country.
The Thanksgivings we spent in Libya are almost blurs, since my schedule to be on drilling rigs was such that I ended up celebrating Thanksgiving sitting with a crew in a trailer eating canned pressed turkey and just-thawed green English peas (served at every meal except breakfast) while Vertis settled down in Benghazi with her windows locked shut at night.
When you have been with your family for every Thanksgiving since you were old enough to remember, being away in a foreign country where American holidays are ignored was a lonely time for both of us. After we returned to Texas, we made that 10 hour-drive to south Arkansas every Thanksgiving.
As I look forward to Thanksgiving, we'll miss our parents who have been gone several years, but in their place are grandchildren. For the last several years our traditional meal preparation has been spread out, with our Little Rock family bringing some dishes, and this year our daughter Lara will make the dressing.
Our table features rutabagas, semi-homemade rolls (my mother's hot roll recipe hasn't been duplicated yet). It was one of those recipes that depended on the feel of the dough, which the current roll makers haven't mastered.
Green beans are a must, and a sweet potato dish is always added for variety. I'm in charge of the turkey, and for years I smoked it overnight. Now, I have joined the deep-fat-frying crowd, so I order my turkey, and pick it up Thanksgiving morning just out of the fryer. Dropping a turkey into boiling oil sears the turkey and holds in the moisture. Our family agrees that it is better than my dried-out smoked turkey.
The dressing is always the feature item after the turkey, and I can remember a decade or so back, sitting down to the Thanksgiving table ,wondering if the dressing was going to be good, OK, or barely edible. It was a toss-up when the Masons' dressing was sampled, and there were some misses.
But not any more. A number of years back Jo Ellen Mason, wife of a west Texas highwayman and a distant kin, on her death bed scribbled down her secret dressing recipe, noted to be the best dressing recipe west of the Pecos. "I guess I can't take it to heaven, so here it is ..." were her last words. (That may be a slight exaggeration, but the recipe did come from an old west Texas cookbook.)
If your Thanksgiving dressing recipe isn't bringing 'em back for thirds, this is a public service announcement just for you. I will give you an Arkansas guarantee that you will get rave reviews if you use this recipe for your Thanksgiving dressing.
Ingredients: 4 cups buttermilk cornbread crumbs; 2 cups buttermilk biscuits, crumbled; 1 cup chopped celery; 1/2 cup chopped onion; 1 tart apple, chopped; 1-1/2 teaspoon salt; 1 teaspoon black pepper; 1 teaspoon poultry seasoning or 1/2 teaspoon sage; 6 eggs, beaten; 1 cup milk; 1/4 pound butter, melted; 4 cups hot chicken broth.
Combine breads, celery, onion, apple and seasonings; mix well. Combine eggs and milk; pour over bread mixture. Combine butter and broth; pour over mixture. Let set for 15-20 minutes. Pour into greased pan; bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour.
If you don't use homemade biscuits or the right cornbread, it won't be perfect. Making the biscuits is my job, and it will get your hands involved in mixing the biscuit dough. This recipe is from the Goodwin Family Cookbook. They had a general store on Highway 7 at the intersection of the road to Norphlet and lived on the hill behind the store in a large pre-Civil War home.
When I was a boy, I heard that sometime after the Civil War, General Robert E. Lee visited and stayed in the house. The house and store are gone now.
Buttermilk biscuits: Into a mixing bowl, sift a large quantity of flour. Make a well in center. Into the well put 1 teaspoon salt, 2 teaspoons baking powder, ½ teaspoon soda, 1 cup buttermilk, and shortening the size of an egg. With hands, mix all ingredients with enough flour to make a stiff dough and pinch off desired size pieces. Put in pan, in which the bottom is generously covered with melted shortening. Bake in hot oven (475 degrees) until brown as you want.
Vertis Mason's famous cornbread: Mix 1 cup stone ground cornmeal, 1 egg, 1 teaspoon of baking powder, ½ teaspoon of baking soda, 1 teaspoon of salt; add enough buttermilk to make a heavy soupy mix. Pour into a hot, heavily greased 12-inch cast-iron skillet and bake at 400 degrees until it's done.
Sea Foam Salad: As a bonus, here's one of the most popular side dishes that you will ever put on your Thanksgiving table: 1 large can of pears, mashed; 1 package lime Jell-O, heated with pear juice. Mix together, add an eight-ounce package cream cheese, whipped. Chill until firm, cut into squares, and serve.
That's the perfect Thanksgiving dinner. Now you're ready for Black Friday.
Email Richard Mason at richard@gibraltarenergy.com.
Editorial on 11/24/2019