It ain't much, but we call it 'Thanksgiving'
Cooking Thanksgiving dinner is a daunting prospect. Most of my friends' mothers didn't even attempt to on Thanksgiving. Their families packed their things, drove over the hills and through the woods to grandmother's house and let her do all the work. This has left me to wonder if when this generation of grandmothers dies, Thanksgiving dinner as we know it will fade away, only to be replaced by TV dinners and Hamburger Helper. My mother, who began her day in the kitchen at 9 a.m. and didn't end it until the last dish was on the table at 5 p.m., quite literally waged war against the meal. Between balancing squash, corn, carrots, green beans, sweet potatoes, cranberry sherbet, pumpkin pie, two kinds of stuffing, gravy and of course the damned turkey, she looked physically drained by the time the family sat down to dinner. At the annual Thanksgiving get-together of Indiana Daily Student staffers, the job of cooking the turkey always falls, to much complaining and protest, on the most mature and oldest staffers, in the hopes that along with the ability to hold their tongues and manage their time well, these people have also somehow picked up the ability to effectively cook a 25-pound monstrosity of a turkey in a dinky college apartment oven.
