Carrying on the Tradition

My grandmother enjoyed life. She loved Jesus, being with people, Atlanta Braves baseball, and cooking. Granny Beulah had an infectious laugh and loved making people smile; her cooking put a smile on many, many faces.

On every Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, Mother's Day...growing up, the family would come together in granny's cozy house to celebrate and eat her amazing spread of meats, fruits, vegetables, breads, and desserts. We would stuff our faces, wait a few hours, then stuff our faces some more. From the minute we walked into her door, the smell of her cooking lured us in and we'd find granny in the kitchen working on a few last minute things to finish up the hours that she'd spent cooking. She would be pulling bread out of the oven, stirring the creamed corn, and opening the microwave, but she'd still find time to hug every neck that came in. I don't know how she managed that all with a smile on her face. She was amazing.

I come from a line of great cooks. Not only is my grandmother a wonderful cook, but my mom is a great cook, as well. Then, there's me....I love to eat, but I've never been too great at cooking. On Christmas of 2002, Granny Beulah gave me one of the best presents I've ever gotten. She gave me a cookbook. It was a book of thirty-seven of her recipes that she'd hand-written just for me. There is no telling how long it took her to write all of the recipes in this book, and she made one for each of her grandchildren.

Honestly, though I love and treasure this book, I hadn't even attempted to use any of these recipes. I think it's because I don't feel like I can do them justice and I'd rather just remember these meals the way she cooked them for us up until a few years ago. Another reason that I haven't used these recipes is because most of them seem pretty hard to follow. My grandmother cooked for so long that she didn't need to use exact measurements for her dishes; she just knew what they were supposed to look like along the way. This is not how I cook. I need a formula to follow.

I pulled out Granny's cookbook this week when I started thinking about what I could prepare beforehand and freeze for Thanksgiving. For the first time ever, we will not be in Georgia for the holidays, so I want to make our holiday meals special for the four of us. There it was on page 4: "dressing." Tonight, I left my husband with the cookbook turned to page 4, wished him luck-ha!, and took my little one out on an errand. When I came back a couple of hours later, the smell hit me at the door, and a flood of memories came back to me. It smelled like my granny's house. She felt so near. I knew that it was time to cook through her recipes, and I thought that it would be fun to share.

My goal is to cook through at least one of Granny Beulah's recipes a week until I've been through the whole cookbook. My husband will do a lot of the cooking, so he will share his experiences, too. We'll share the recipe, (hopefully) give some exact measurements, and post pics, too. I'd love for any siblings/cousins to contribute a blog post of a recipe from her cookbook, if you would like. Let's carry on the tradition of Granny Beulah's amazing southern home cooking.