When I was a child, I didn’t spend much time in the kitchen. I never watched my mother make dinner or asked to stir the pot when food was simmering on the stove. I always found something I would rather be doing.
But Thanksgiving was different.
I would follow my mother through the kitchen as she tore through the pantry, looking for all the ingredients to make her special banana pudding.
My grandmother used to make it—a simple, no-bake kind that seemed so different from the ones you would find at even the most popular meat and three restaurants—and she eventually shared it with my mother. You could call it a family favorite, and anyone who tried it would always request it when the holidays rolled around.
Year after year, the paper my mother wrote that recipe on lay creased and tattered on the counter as she mixed all the ingredients. There were even spots of smeared ink from all the whipping and layering that came afterwards…
(Read the rest, over at my friend Deidra Riggs’ space, Jumping Tandem. Then sign up to get her posts by email, if you want to get all the posts in her special Holiday Traditions series, sent right to your inbox)
