We Serve Our First Thanksgiving Dinner

When I was was growing up in Panaca, Thanksgiving was
always a day filled with love and laughter, family and
friends.  Mom and Dad always made sure that there was
no one in Panaca who did not have a place to go for
dinner.  It was a tradition to have guests, other than
family, for dinner.

Our Thanksgiving was filled with tradition, starting the
day before when Mother would bake her pies and the
shells for the whipped cream and jelly tarts She would
have the dried corn softening in her special broth and the
lemon sauce made for her suet pudding, a favorite dessert
of family and friends.

Delores and I would dust each room in the house, giving
special attention to the piano and all of Mother's Elf
figurines and seashells.

Thanksgiving morning I would wake up to the heavenly
aromas emanating from the kitchen and the rustle and
bustle of Mother as she worked.  She usually had a few
chores for Delores and I to do.  When we were finished,
she would send us outside to while away the time until
we were called inside to set the tables.  We waited with
unrestrained excitement for that call to come.  It was so
exciting as family and friends began to arrive.

After Dad said a prayer of thanksgiving and blessed the
food, dinner was served.  The menu for our Thanksgiving
dinner never changed, it was tradition.  There was turkey
and dressing, ham, mashed potatoes and turkey gravy,
Mother's famous sweet potato souffle, dried corn,
reconstituted and cooked in her original cream sauce,
green beans and onions, fruit salad with pomegranates
and whipped cream, several varieties of Mother's home
canned pickles and her famous rolls served with oodles
of fresh churned butter.  For dessert there was pumpkin,
apple, mincemeat and cherry pie, and all of the whipped
cream and jelly tarts the children could eat. And, of course,
Mother's famous suet pudding with lemon sauce, which
the older people, especially, looked forward to with great
anticipation.

When your mother holds the title of "Lincoln County's
Most Famous Cook", with her fame extending throughout
the State of Nevada, her Thanksgiving dinners are legendary.
I look back at this and marvel because until the early fifties,
all of this was done on a wood burning stove with no hot and
cold running water in the house.  Lois Stewart Wadsworth
was truly a "miracle worker."

After dinner, Dad asked each family member and guest,
to share something they were especially grateful for.
Plates of food were then delivered to the elderly and
needy people in town.  That was anorher James Allen
and Lois Stewart Wadsworth Thanksgiving Tradition.

When George and I were married in 1951 and I joined
him in California where he was in the Navy and stationed
at The Naval Training Center in San Diego, it was nearing
the Thanksgiving and Christmas season and even though I
was excited to finally be with my husband, I was very sad
at the thought of being away from Panaca and my family
for the first time at Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Our first home together was not in San Diego but in
Westminster, 95 miles and an hour and a half drive from
San Diego.  As I have previously written, George's
brother Jack, his wife Lee, and their two children,
Lloyd and Jackie, lived there.  While we were waiting
for our name to come up for a unit in Public Quarters
near the Training Center, George wanted me to live near
them so I would not be alone as often .

On our first Thanksgiving as husband and wife, George
was able to leave the base and come to Westminster for
Thanksgiving weekend.  We had dinner at Jack and Lee's.
Lee's parents, Mom and Dad Shinpaugh, her three sisters
and her brother were there.  It was a lovely day and
dinner was delicious, but I was so homesick and missed
all of the tradition associated with my family.

We were living in Hillcrest, a suburb of San Diego,
on our second Thanksgiving.  George was scheduled for
duty on both Thanksgiving and Christmas.  It was a
sad, lonely time for me.  I spent Thanksgiving with my
friend Annabelle, whose husband, Nick, was serving in
The Personnel Division with George and was a good
friend.  He also had duty that day.  Annabelle and I did
not cook dinner, we ate out and I don't remember where.

Our third Thanksgiving found us living in Public Quarters
with Annabelle and Nick as our neighbors.  We were excited
to plan our own Thanksgiving dinner and cook our first
turkey and dressing.  Several weeks before Thanksgiving,
I frantically wrote Mom and asked her to send instructions
for cooking a turkey and her recipe for dressing. 

We invited Nick, Annabelle and two other young men
who worked in The Personnel Division with Nick and
George, Danny Peruzzi, the little Italian bundle of
energy I have previously written about, and a handsome
African American boy, O.J. White.  They were both
single and had no place to go for dinner unless they ate
on base.  Thus, we were following Mom and Dad's
Thanksgiving Tradition of everyone having a place
to eat dinner. 

The recipe and instructions for cooking the turkey and
dressing arrived along with a suet pudding and recipes
for Mother's pie crust and lemon sauce,  There was also
 a jar of the Pottawatomie Plum Jelly, made from the
plums on Mom's trees and used in the tarts, a small bag
of dried corn with the directions for reconstituting it,
and the recipe for the cream sauce to cook it in. 

Following tradition, the night before, we made a pumpkin,
apple, mincemeat, and cherry pie, the shells for the tarts,
the lemon sauce, and started the process foe the corn.

Thanksgiving morning, carefully following Mom's
directions, George prepared the turkey while I made the
dressing.  He then stuffed the turkey and got it in the  oven. 
He used his own recipe for the sweet potatoes.

I was a nervous wreck waiting for the turkey and dressing
to cook; would it be cooked properly, would it taste good?

The turkey and dressing were cooked to perfection.  The
lemon sauce was maybe not as smooth as Mom's, but it
was delicious.  The pie crust was as flaky as it should be,
 the tarts were beautiful, and miracle of miracles, the corn
turned out tender and creamy.

George and I were relieved, a bit surprised, but very
proud of our endeavors, and our guests thought dinner
was perfection.  They even raved about the suet pudding.
Everyone is not raised eating it like I was and do not
know how wonderful it is until they eat it for the first
time.

I was ecstatic; we observed traditions, the guests were
wonderful, and they left happy and sated

This is the story of the first turkey and Thanksgiving
dinner we prepared and served as husband and wife.

THANKSGIVING AND SUET PUDDING TRIVIA

By the mid fifties, Mom and Dad had running hot and
cold water in the house.  We had bought Mother a gas stove,
not to be used in place of her beloved wood burning stove,
but in addition too.  We also bought her an electric roaster
oven in which she soon delighted using to cook her turkey.

For years, Rhonda has been cooking our Thanksgiving
dinner. She and Steve are the ultimate host and hostess
for us, their children and grandchildren and other special
guests  They have established Thanksgiving traditions
and it is heart warming to me that most of them are the
same as the ones I grew up with and raised our children
with.  Rhonda always cooks her turkey in her electric
roaster oven and it is always delicious.

Like Britain's famous Plum or Christmas Pudding,
Suet Pudding is a steamed pudding and they are all
made with suet.

Many people do not know what suet is.  It is the hard
fat taken from the loins and around the kidneys of
beef or mutton.  It's melting and congelation point
is high and it has a near zero smoke point.  This
makes it ideal for deep frying, pastry, shepherds
pie, and steamed puddings.

In the days of the Puritans and early Mormon Pioneers,
suet was most often what they used in their cooking and
baking.

You can find suet in many supermarkets by going direct
to the butcher and requesting it.  It will be fresh when
 you purchase it.

George and I learned to make suet pudding using Mom's
recipe.  In our El Cajon Wards and the Descanso Branch,
we became known for making it during the Thanksgiving
and Christmas season and it was always a favorite and much
loved dessert for our family and friends, especially the
older people.  We were asked one year to make it as one
of the desserts for the El Cajon Stake's Relief Society
Christmas Dinner.  We served it with lemon sauce and it
was a big hit and talked about for a long time. 

Mother's Christmas gift to her children when they married,
was always a suet pudding, fruit cake, pine nuts, and a jar
 of Potawattomie Plum Jelly for tarts.  They would arrive
wrapped in Chrismas paper in time for Thanksgiving.  She
did this each year until she was no longer physically able to
do so.

The following post is the letter and instructions we received
from Mother after I frantically wrote her for help as we
prepared to cook our first Thanksgiving turkey and dinner.

I had told George we absolutely could not cook our turkey
without one of his old white t-shirts, bleached, washed and
greased with shortening, to wrap it while it cooked.  I have
always thought that was the secret to Mother's perfectly
roasted turkeys.