A Thanksgiving Feast, a Hungry Kid, and Some Hungry Cats

With Thanksgiving fast approaching, I figured I’d talk about some of my childhood memories of the holiday.

Growing up, Thanksgiving dinner was hosted at my aunt’s house. My family was and still is one of the lucky ones that don’t have to travel across the country to spend time with loved ones. As a matter of fact, my aunt and uncle’s house was just a 10 minute drive away.

When you’re a kid, time seems to go for an eternity. If an adult tells you to wait and hour, that hour feels like a whole day. The whole month of December feels like an eternity and Christmas feels like it’s never going to come.

Waiting for Thanksgiving dinner to get done wasn’t any better especially when I could smell the blending aromas of mashed potato, stuffing, turkey …

When we’d come over for Thanksgiving, we’d come over well before Thanksgiving dinner was ready to socialize.

I remember coming out into the kitchen to check if Thanksgiving dinner was done only to find my aunt still adding ingredients and cooking. Disappointed and hungry, I’d return to the living room only to peek out into the kitchen ten minutes later. As a eager hungry kid, it was probably shorter than that!

🍴What was on the menu? 🍽️

For those that celebrate, everyone has their own signature dishes on the table. Some, like my family, have a turkey as a must have dish for Thanksgiving while others do Thanksgiving a little different.

Thanksgiving at my aunt’s house included:

Roasted turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes (they were more whipped as my aunt used a hand mixer to make them), gravy, sweet corn, sweet peas, candied yams, buttered noodles, and pumpkin pie for dessert!

No green bean casserole or cranberry sauce?

We’ve never had green bean casserole or cranberry sauce — two very popular Thanksgiving dishes — on the table. Besides, with the food we had already, there’d barely be any room! To this day, I don’t think I’ve ever even had cranberry sauce.

Southcentral Pennsylvania, where I’m from, deviled eggs are also a popular staple for Thanksgiving. We didn’t have those either. Deviled eggs were more fitting as part of an Easter dinner for us.

There was plenty of food to go around and my family was small, so there were plenty of leftovers to last days.

We weren’t the only one’s that were hungry and eager for a taste of a Thanksgiving feast!

My aunt and uncle had a few cats and a dog, none who were afraid to beg for a piece of food.

My aunt would shoo a cat away in annoyance as it jumped on the kitchen counter attempting to steal some food as she cooked. There was one instance in which the turkey was on the table and one of her boldest strong minded cats jumped up on the table, grabbed the turkey by the leg and tried to run off with it like a wild cat that just claimed a kill.

The turkey was bigger than him!

Both the dog and the cats would sit at your feet hoping a scrap of food would drop. I think the cats were even more persistent than the dog! If you came over for Thanksgiving dinner, don’t be surprised to be tapped and have your arm pulled by a cat hoping you’d share a piece of turkey!

At one point, the begging got so bad, the dog and the cats had to go into another room just until we were done eating. We did give them each a piece of turkey afterwards!

As I’ve grown older and realized just how hard my aunt worked to prepare Thanksgiving dinner, the more the eagerness to just eat the food when I was a kid turned to gratitude and deep appreciation. For anyone that has been in charge of putting together a Thanksgiving meal for the family, it’s not easy.

To anyone that celebrates, Happy Thanksgiving!