FOOD

It's Thanksgiving this week, and of course our thoughts turn to food. My family has their favorites that they like every year - in fact every year I ask around if they want something different, but they always want the same things - Turkey (of course), cornbread stuffing, gravy, broccoli-rice casserole, sweet potatoes with marshmallows, pink stuff (do you know what pink stuff is?), black olives, rolls, pumpkin pie, pecan pie.

This made me think about myself as a child and I wondered what the things I remembered as my favorites back then. I think my all-time favorite thing to eat when I was young was a hamburger from Broncos Drive-in Restaurant. We didn't get them often, but I thought they were the best thing I had ever put in my mouth. I also thought the hamburgers at the elementary school cafeteria were great. Some other things that Mom actually made that were favorites of mine: Eggnog, Rice pudding, Steamed Carrot Pudding at Christmas with lemon sauce, hamburgers and hot dogs we used to cook down at Fontenelle Park or in our backyard, oatmeal, macaroni and tomatoes, fresh corn on the cob, chicken soup with homemade noodles, chicken enchilada, cherry cheesecake, Dad's homemade fudge, Mom's homemade peach jam.

Things Mom cooked that I didn't like: Spice cake, Thanksgiving stuffing, pizza, tamale pie, melted cheese sandwiches (she didn't grill them, just put a hunk of cheese on bread and put it in the oven), sour kraut with hot dogs, or beans and hot dogs. I always hated it whenever I would get up in the morning and Mom would tell us we were out of milk. She would cook pancakes but then we had to eat them with no milk to wash them down. Hated that. I hated even worse when dad would go out of town and sometimes we would go 2 or 3 days without milk. Hated that too. I also didn't like the Christmas candy dad would get. He loved hard candy and would buy ribbon candy and different "minty" hard candy, some hard candy with kind of gel filling. I never liked peppermint candy canes we got for Christmas. Mom's mince pie wasn't my favorite either.

Some favorite things at my Grandmothers were: dutch oven mutton, bread and milk with fresh onions and icicle radishes from the garden, Grandma's brown cake, hot cracked wheat cereal, a slice of homemade bread with homemade butter and homemade jam - put in a bowl with fresh cream poured over the top, sprinkled with sugar. My great aunt used to make the best pies in the world! My favorites were rubarb and sour cream raisin. I used to save my money so every year I could go to her cafe and order a piece of sour cream raisin pie on Pioneer Day.

I'm sure I had more favorites and more non-favorites, but these were what I could think of at the moment.