Thanks Mom!

I miss my Mom everyday. Mom passed away three years ago and I wouldn't say its any easier for me. The holidays are always difficult. My mom always made the holidays special for us. Yes there was always drama but there was also always great food that mom put both her time and love into making.

Tonight as I'm cooking mom's recipes for dressing and sweet potato casserole I want to pick up the phone and give her a call. I can't remember the exact amount of butter for the dressing or the order of mixing the ingredients.

Mom was a great cook. And mom always cooked enough to feed a small army. Now we never ate on time and I do mean never but the food was so good and there was so much that the frustration always faded while you were eating.

I'm not sure I told mom often enough how much I appreciated her cooking. I'm quite certain I didn't spend enough time in the kitchen trying to learn from her. If I could go back in time I'd watch how she prepared the food, I would have written down all of her recipes, and I would have learned to be a better cook.

When mom became ill the last time we all realized there were so many foods mom cooked that we all loved but none of us had the recipes. My dad began coming over and asking mom to share the recipes. As she would list the ingredients he's write them down, type them up later and save them on the computer. What we didn't know at the time was that mom's memory of the recipes wasn't always complete. We also didn't realize that the recipes she had written down or recipes that were in her cookbook were also incomplete.

You know how you'll be in the kitchen cooking something and decide to change it up, you add an ingredient you don't normally use or leave something in the recipe out well if you like the changes write it down, make a note. Apparently my mom frequently made changes to recipes but never wrote the changes down. She knew the changes, she'd remeber the changes when making the dish but now she's gone and we're clueless.

Somehow cooking Thanksgiving dinner makes me feel closer to mom. Thanks mom for teaching me that food can bring a family together. Thanks mom for leaving us some of the best recipes for dressing and sweet potato casserole. And thanks for teaching me yet another lesson, keep our favorite recipes and note all changes, teach your kids how to cook their favorites because you won't always be there and everything made with love always tastes better.