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in article , Melba's
Jammin' at wrote on 12/1/04 9:51 AM:

> In article >,
> (Alex Rast) wrote:
>
>>> And, who thought it would be
>>> a good idea to melt very sweet marshmellows (not my first food
>>> choice, anyway), on top of brown-sugar sweetened, sweet potatoes?
>>
>> Again, hear hear! What's so wrong about perfectly good sweet potatoes
>> by themselves? Must they be made sweet to the point of sickliness?
>> Gee, while we're at it, why not soak the potatoes in sugar-water
>> until they can't absorb any more?
>
> I remember the late Peg Bracken years ago writing that "they've repealed
> the law that says you have to have marshmallows with sweet potatoes."
> <grin>.

My Mom's version of Thanksgiving dinner was perfectly roasted turkey, with
baked sweet potatoes, buttered peas, and dressing of some sort. In other
words, SIMPLY PREPARED side dishes!!!! Plus canned jellied cranberry sauce,
served in slices in an oval dish, and those little brown and serve dinner
rolls, she would get the package that had half white and half whole wheat
rolls.

There were some years when my sister made Thanksgiving that we had canned
yams cooked with pineapple and marshmallows, but there were always baked
sweets on the table, too, b/c Mom didn't really have a sweet tooth and loved
baked sweets with butter. Frankly, to this day, that's my preference for
sweet potatoes. I don't need the marshmallows.

Stove Top stuffing, once it became available, became the norm and we all
liked it a lot b/c it tasted like we thought stuffing should taste, but
prior to that, she would use either dried cubes or I vividly remember
ripping apart unsliced white bread one year, I was tiny, 4 or 5, maybe. And
there was a lot of dressing, and some went into the bird, but mostly it was
baked in corningware. And no one wanted from the bird, we all wanted the
stuff that was baked separately. And there was no "weird stuff" in Mom's
stuffing, like giblets, or chestnuts. It was just onions, mushroom slices
and celery, maybe an apple....the bread crumbs or bread, all moistened with
broth. (I do remember her cooking the neck and disgusting stuff from inside
the bird to make the broth for the dressing the night before thanksgiving.)
That's all that went into her stuffing. And we loved it.

That's probably why she went the Stove Top route. It was what we liked.

To this day, my sister, brother and I all prefer Stove Top to any of this
other "Gilded lily" stuff people make with chestnuts, meat, etc.

And we never had green bean casserole growing up.
That was for the "white bread" waspy neighbors, according to my mom.

In fact, I never had green bean casserole until I was an adult--I had it at
a friend's open house Holiday party. I took a small forkful to taste, just
out of curiosity, I had heard so much about it! And I hate to admit it, but
I like it. It's rather heavy, and to me, it goes with a simple meal, not a
feast. I surely wouldn't want to eat it with any regularity, but it's not a
bad thing to eat once or twice a year.