Happy Thanksgiving and Pass the Cornbread Dressing

Today, I would like to wish all my readers a Happy Thanksgiving.  For most of us, that means a day spent with family and friends, gathered together for a meal (and some football!) that signifies thankfulness for not only food and the necessities of life, but for our most precious gifts - each other. 


If you currently live in the South, or if you have lived in the South and are now transplanted elsewhere, before all the turkey and the football, there is cornbread dressing.  In our family, the recipe for this staple Thanksgiving dish has been handed down for generations.  My mother, whose recipe I make, says she learned to make the dressing from my dad's Great Aunt Stella, who learned to make it from her mother, my great-grandmother Claudia Baldridge Branch. The source of the recipe gets fuzzy past that point, but attributing it to Granny Claudy makes the recipe at least a century old.


Besides being an "heirloom" recipe, what makes this cornbread dressing special?  For me, it is the aroma and taste created by the just-right combination of celery, onion, sage, and thyme.  Nothing says dinner is almost ready quite as much as the aroma of cornbread dressing baking in an oven from which good ole Tom Turkey has just been removed! 


So that's what I will be doing tomorrow.....making that heirloom recipe for some family and friends.  And while I am making the cornbread, chopping the celery, and dicing the onion, I will be giving thanks for so many, many things - family that makes me happy, friends who make me smile, food, shelter, and clothing, and all the many other blessings that God has bestowed upon me ~ including all of you, dear readers, who continue to follow my blog.  


Now go and enjoy the cornbread dressing!

Froggie's Friday Book Review - "The South"

Although I am Southern by birth and personally lived the "southern experience" for at least a portion of my life, I still consider myself a student of Southern culture. And I always welcome the opportunity to learn more about the part of this country that I love best.

Recently, I discovered a book entitled simply "The South." Primarily intended as a reference book, it is one of eight volumes included in a set known as The Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Regional Studies. The set covers every geographic area of the country, and each volume contains something for everyone, regardless of which state you may call home. Each book contains resource material written by various authors who cover a variety of subject matter, ranging from architecture, art, ethnicity, and folklore, to food, language, literature, music and religion. The facts and the stories presented in "The South" allow researchers and readers alike to examine the heart, the soul, and the diversity of the residents of this historically significant geographic area.

As a researcher, I highly recommend The Greenwood Enclyclopedia of American Studies. And as a reader of books about the South, its culture and its people, I recommend the volume entitled "The South." As a southerner, it was within this book's 508 pages that I found exactly what Eudora Welty referred to as "a sense of place."