The First Thanksgiving

With Thanksgiving just around the corner, the web rumbles about Krystal Stuffing are coming again. In fact I got a plug over at The Krystalist yesterday. To assist those who may be making their way here from there let me toss out a few links, since the original posts are so old they won't show up in a search of the Blog's archives: First the Stuffing FAQ which answers most of the questions I get from people. Then the post on what you should be doing the night before Thanksgiving. And then finally The recipe itself (Look for links in the post for the recipe and also the step-by-step.) Now with that out of the way, I figured it might be useful to give the real story behind the first Thanksgiving where Krystal Stuffing appeared. It was way back in November of 1994. (Begin wavy lines and flashback noises like Wayne's World.) I had graduated from Mercer in spring of 1994 and moved into my first apartment, an on campus studio, for grad school. I had begun dabbling in cooking as soon as I had moved to my own place but not really gotten very good. My girlfriend for while in college, Nikki didn't cook. In fact when she went home to visit they'd always eat out or get delivery. I realized that, should Nikki and I get married, I'd starve to death. I knew then I *had* to learn to cook simply for self preservation reasons. My first venture was teriyaki chicken. No one ever seemed to make it the way I liked it. I like it with thick sauce that sticks to the chicken, and with onions in with the chicken. So every night for almost 3 weeks I made teriyaki chicken until I perfected the recipe. It is quite amazing and delicious. Sadly, I ate so much teriyaki chicken that summer that I don't make it anymore. My next venture was cheesecakes. We all know wow that went. Of course only a few know of (and no one but me ever saw) the infamous "cottage cheese cheesecake." What's the saying about Edison failing hundreds of times before he perfected the light bulb? Sure the light bulb and a cheesecake aren't even close to the same thing, but I'd much rather eat cheesecake than a light bulb. So back to the first Thanksgiving on my own. The obvious choice for Thanksgiving would be to go to my parents house. They still lived about 80 miles north in Conyers, and it would have been easy enough. The problem was that they were going north to my grandparent's in North Carolina wouldn't be back in time for me to get to work. I worked at Post office during school breaks and thus had to work after Thanksgiving. I was stranded in Macon for Thanksgiving.It's not adversity, it's opportunity.I decided that I would make an entire Thanksgiving dinner. Just to prove to myself that I could. I began to gather the recipes and ingredients I'd need to make my feast. Most of the recipes were directly from my mother. I pulled a few off the internet as well. (Yes, there was an internet in 1994, but the web was still a baby back then and you actually had to know what you were doing to use it.) As I was out shopping the day before Thanksgiving, I had on my list of things to buy my standard pre-Thanksgiving Krystal combo. But seeing the list of ingredients for my mother's stuff, and the Krystals on the same list, an idea started brewing. Since I would be in charge of all the cooking, and the eating, I realized that I could do ANYTHING I wanted to. And the decision was made. I went line-by-line through my mother's Stuffing recipe, and substituted Krystals for the equivalent items in my mother's recipe. I clearly remember that Thanksgiving. I had the TV on with It's A Wonderful Life playing. I was dancing around in my tiny kitchen. I had food and fixin's everywhere. I'd made cream cheese stuffed celery as an appetizer. I'd made a blueberry frozen yogurt pie for dessert. There'd be rolls, and peas, and gravy, and cranberry sauce, and turkey, and of course the stuffing. Then I git a snag. The gravy and the stuffing required boiled eggs. How long do you boil an egg? I'd never boiled an egg. None of my cookbooks said a word about how long to boil an egg. I had 6 eggs. I put them all in a pot and boiled them. For about 2 minutes. When I cracked the first one, I realized I had a problem. I put them all back on the stove and let them go for another minute, before I again cracked one open. This was not going well. I was running out of eggs, patience, and time. I did NOT want to make a run back to Kroger for more eggs on Thanksgiving day. I tried to call my mother but they'd already left for my grandmother's house. Back then there wasn't really much in the way of cell phones, so I called ahead to my grandmother's house. I wished my grandmother a happy Thanksgiving day and when I asked her to have my mother call me when she arrived, my grandmother asked what the problem was. When I mentioned my egg situation, she laughed. A lot. She informed me that 2 and 4 minutes was not even close. I'd need 10 minutes or so for hard boiled, which is what I needed.You cannot place a value on the wisdom and experience of grandparents.With the egg disaster avoided, I returned to my mission. The stuffing was made. The turkey was cooked, and the dinner was complete. Then the dinner was eaten, a nap was taken. Dishes were washed. A turkey sandwich with a side of stuffing was eaten. Paper plates were used to avoid dirtying up any more dishes. (I didn't have a dish washer back then and sink space was limited.) I still think back to that Thanksgiving and giggle. I think of the audacity I had to take on an entire Thanksgiving dinner, when I'd really only mastered teriyaki chicken and cheesecakes. I laugh at how far the simple, yet slightly insane, idea of putting my Krystals in my stuffing has taken me. I guess I really do have a lot to be thankful for. I'll be even more thankful the day I have a Krystal less than 2 hours away.