R.H. Snow's Blog

Thanksgiving is coming and I am humming:

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedWe gather together to ask the Lord’s BlessingHe hastens and chastens, His will to make knownThe Wicked oppressing now cease from distressing Sing praises to His Name, He forgets not His Own.

I am forgetting not my own.

This new Cook Book is from 1950, and my Mother’s Soul is written in here

I have a particular love of Thanksgiving, because it is my Mother’s Holiday. The Feast of a gloriously basted Turkey with its crispy golden roasted wings, and its sagey cornbread stuffing was my favorite meal as a little girl, so much so that I asked for it on my Birthday as well. I loved my Mother’s stuffing, and for those who will quibble - yes, I know Dressing and Stuffing are two different things:

DRESSING: Southern, it more like a bread pudding, moist and delicious with gravy

STUFFING: Northern, it is a bread casserole, fluffy and toasty, soaked in broth then baked.

DISCLOSURE: There is no reason to fight the Civil War again over this: there was a Yankee in the family on Mother’s side, and that’s how we ended up with Stuffing.

It’s all in the Better Homes and Gardens Cook Book circa 1950, that Sacred Tome of the Savoury and Sweet. Her notes are everywhere, along with grease spatters and little spots of dough, love from an oven.

Behold the glorious technicolor chicken

Now, before I go further, I should explain: as a Schroedinger’s Human, I live in the constant state of what is vs what was vs what will be. Thanks to a genetic predisposition of just up and dropping dead (thank you, EDS and your lovely COL31a gene) I am keenly aware of the fact that I have lived well past my expiration date, and am constantly reminded by janky blood pressures that I have a 50/50 chance of storming the Heavenly Gates on any given day. Rather than being depressing or frightening, it is invigorating, because it reminds me that any words might be my last - and do I really want those last words to be ‘Take out the ****ing TRASH-’?

No, no I don’t think so.

Mortality makes one mindful, and so I try to live each day as if it’s my last, even if it’s not. But I also have to live each day as if it might NOT be my last, and I have to make sure I stay up with bills, etc etc. So when I am planning this Thanksgiving Meal, will I have to actually eat it, and what will my Children and their Children remember about my feast?

The answer is, “Your MeeMee couldn’t cook.”

God bless her heart, Mama tried. It’s not like she didn’t let me in the kitchen. She genuinely worked on teaching me to cook- but as a Dirt-Floor Sharecropper’s Daughter who nearly starved to death as a child, there was an implicit fear of ruining food - because there might not be more coming.

WE didn’t have that problem; as a child, I lived like royalty compared to her cotton-picking childhood; we had running water and walls that didn’t let the snow inside on winter days. But Mother lived with that memory of hunger etched into her soul, a gnawing reminder that famine was only a plateful of food away…

and so, the cornucopia of food overflowed at our house. Every nook and cranny was filled to the brim with food, every corner stuffed with preserves and pastries and stores against the perceived apocalypse around the corner - and Mother was the Keeper of the Kitchen Flame. For my Mother, cooking wasn’t just a labour of love - it was an act of survival.

Yes, Mother did this while on 4Liter Flow of Oxygen - with help from her little Helper and my Husband.

But that meant I wasn’t yet trusted with the food. The Meal must be prepared properly if it is to be the last; if I am a Shroedinger’s Human, she was a Shroedinger’s Hunger, the duality of a plentiful present existing side by side with her impoverished past.

And so I watched as she prepared, carefully salting and cooking each meal so it wouldn’t kill us all, as food sometimes did in the days before refrigeration. She took a bite of each canned good 30 minutes before she served it to the family, on the off chance that botulism might be lurking in that innocent-looking can of Tuna. She was the tester and taster, ever living on the edge of a tomorrow that might bring the past roaring back - and I learned all about cooking without actually cooking too much.

I need to bake all of these. Now.

I would feel bad about this; I would complain to you about how my Mother’s caution stifled me, or robbed me self-determination, but the truth is, Mother saved us all from me.

I’ve eaten my cooking, and I’m here to tell you she did us all a favor. Thank God for her wisdom; I am alive because she cooked glorious meals, and my Children are alive because we lived close enough to Grandma that she made pot roast every Sunday. Other than that, it was Beanie Weenie and Pasta Bites, because at least I knew I couldn’t screw that up…

but that also means my Mother’s stuffing died with her.

This CorningWare Dish of the Sacred Stuffing is older than all y’all

It’s literally a person missing from the table; not in a chair but actually ON the table, a place where a dish of heart and heat resided, now empty. That shallow CorningWare dish with the blue flourish is bereft of what made it truly beautiful to me, not just the food it held but the hands that made it -

and that brings us back to me.

I am now the repository of my Mother’s knowledge, without the actual skill. That skill skipped me and landed on my Daughter, who knows the proper way to cook, for unto each person has been given a spiritual Gift. My Daughter has inherited the Gift of Cooking from her Grandma, and has learned to make a tasty cornbread stuffing, and it is almost but not quite Mother’s recipe. She also has inherited a huge responsibility of running the Family Ranch and the Family Business, and that means there is no time this year for her to prepare the Thanksgiving Feast.

And so, Ladies and Gentlemen, it is up to me.

How can this go sideways? Let me count the ways:

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published1)I have a Black and Decker Toaster Oven/AirFryer2)I have a Mini Griddle3)I have an AirPopper4)I have no Skill

I am not complaining here, I am just stating facts. I live off randomly distributed bags of Takis and Farm Fresh Eggs griddled up by my Husband, because he loves to cook and I am thankful for that every day - in fact, he cooks up a banger Thanksgiving from time to time. But that Kitchen now reside with Boy, Bride and Baby - and I will not saddle my precious Daughter in Law with having to make a a gargantuan Family Thanksgiving meal. So I volunteered myself to be the One.

The Problem? We now live in the WunderBunker, and the kitchen is teeny weeny; there is no place to cook a large meal. This means I must rely on the kindness of HEB and the Tamale Lady.

In Texas, Thanksgiving and Christmas Tamales are a thang. Do not question the Tamales; they will be made by one who has been given the GIft of Tamale-Making. The Tamale Lady - known only as La Doña del Tamales- is blessed with the arcane knowledge of masa-to-meat ratios, and she will be rewarded handsomely with cash by all who seek her virtues.

HEB, on the other hand, carries a fully cooked Turkey Breast, and I have chosen to serve it sliced up with Tortillas from the store, as Turkey Fajitas, with Pico De Gallo and Guacamole, made by HEB fresh daily in little plastic tubs.

Only two side dishes will be made by me: one being a Three Sisters Sidedish of Corn, Beans and Squash, specifically Hominy, Black Beans and one of Mr. Pruitt’s still-fresh Church Pumpkins, and the other being Sweet Potato Fries in the Air Fryer, which will be sliced then fried. That’s it. That’s the whole sum of my ability, and GodSpeed to me, I am praying I don’t burn them…

This Thanksgiving will be very delicious, and also very humbling, for I feel as if I have failed my Ancestors.

I remember the labour my Mother put into the Feast, the hands that held the pies, the casseroles, the endless baking and knowledge of eons; and it has come to this? Me parting out my wealth to strangers, so they may feed my family, so I may stare at the Sacred Turkey Platter with the knowledge that they look down from Heaven in disdain at the Absurdity of Modernity?

This is the way it is SUPPOSED to be done

Then Pilgrim Priscilla Mullins elbows her way to the front of the crowd.

Yes, that Priscilla Mullins. She is my Ancestress, she of of the Standish-Alden Love Triangle Fame and Pilgrim Perserverance, who at 19 was orphaned in a Wilderness as norovirus decimated the new Colony. I cannot hear her, but I can distinctly feel her, wagging her ethereal finger at me in gentle pilgrim chiding:

how thankful I should be, as the Keeper of Memory, to live in this time of food and plenty; how the famished dreams of the Pilgrims of Plymouth Rock could only imagine such a world, overflowing with the wealth of food and light and heated houses and clean water that didn’t need to be hauled from the stream…

I feel their hunger running through my veins, the memory of starvation and need, the ache for a single scrap of food ingrained in our collective consciousness like threads in my tapestry; poverty made virtue by those who lived it and loved through it to be washed away by the wave of time. They are in me, alive in me, the Generations of Thousands, born into a single me -

No, I was not given the Gift of Cooking. But I was given the Gift of StoryTelling, and tomorrow, I will share their stories around the Thanksgiving Table. The Tamales will steam with the joy of the present, and the Three Sisters with share their savoury tales of the ancestors of this native soil. The sweet potatoes will sing the Southern song of poverty and plenty, and I will recount the Memory of Millenia, in stuffing, dressing and the remembrace of wings past -

the Mirror of my Mother, my Feast of Thanksgiving.

Everything in shades of grey,
taking all the pain away;
mindless souls who do and say
anything but cry or pray-
pop a pill from day to day...
Everything in shades of grey
Never see another way,
Never feel the real today;
Ever numb with hearts of clay-
Everything in shades of grey

https://x.com/WSJ/status/199214662182...

EEEEEEE HOW DID I END UP on THIS Panel????

Join me 5PM in Chat to Pray for my SOUL

On this Veteran’s Day, I watched ‘Saving Private Ryan’ in full for the first time. You asked me why I had not seen it all. The truth was, I couldn’t handle the cost of war.

I never could watch that movie while your Grandfather was alive. 50 years after the War, it was still too fresh for him; the wounds of battle were still too raw - and PTSD is an insidious Brutality. So when my Father passed from this world, free at last from the nightmares that haunted him until his dying day, that left your Grandmother and me...

We tried to watch, we really did, but your Grandmother’s tender heart could only take the first few frames. I myself couldn’t handle the first 10 minutes; I could only imagine my Father as a boy, in that hell of Carnage.

Later in the movie I peeked in and watched as much as I could tolerate. I saw the most important parts, like the end; but it was the Music that struck me most, an emotional portrait of the cost of war.

The year was was 2002 - that the year before you went to War.

There are things I still haven’t quite dealt with. I know it’s nothing compared to the hell of combat, but there is a different trauma that comes with watching your heart march away to war. Only music can convey that heartache...

that’s why the score for Saving Private Ryan has been on my playlist forever. Music was how I handled the potential weight of Grief; music helped me deal with the uncertainty of the war you and your friends were fighting. Many nights I spent face down in the floor, praying for you as the music played for on.

Because of those nights, Hymn to the Fallen is now on the eternal list of music I’ll never be able to listen to again without coming undone. Looking back on it from the vista of 20 years, I can see that Dark Valley-

and I see the road led here. You came home.

But what of the ones didn’t?

They are etched on our hearts, a tattoo that speaks every moment of the ones that never came home:

You are not forgotten.

Tonight I will gather my precious things - the tattered flag that hung outside my door for the entirety of the war; the blue star banner that hung in my window; and my Father’s folded flag. I’m going to lay them to rest, as the Daughter, Sister, Mother, Aunt who was never the one who went to war; but I still came away with scars of my own.

We are still here, you and I. We are the ones who survived, the ones who came home and tried to remember what it was you were fighting for. And the ones we left behind are still there, between the crosses row on row...

The real cost of war will never be known except to those who have paid the price. You know who you are. You know the cost;

and those of us who love you know, too.

The cost was us.

Tonight, remember
the Dead of November, still
sailing Inland Seas;

Sailors returning
to Loved Ones still yearning, they
rise upon the breeze -

Home, where a Harbor
Memorial Arbor in
mournful toll decrees:

“Ever remember
the Dead of November, still
sleeping in the seas!”

HOW TO BAKE A PUNKIN 💖by me

FIRST - Get you a Punkin. Church Punkins are best. It is not stealing if you ask the Preacher first.

SECOND prepare your Punkin Altar💖this is a sacred space

THIRD prepare your Punkin. Tell it thank you💖IT IS A BEAUTIFUL PUNKIN

FOURTH place your Punkin on a foil lined pan and lovingly oil your Punkin. I used coconut oil because it smells divine. Poke it gently with a fork, or it will explode, and exploding Punkins are epic but maybe later 😱NOT NOW

FIFTH bake your Punkin at 350 degrees for one hour. Gaze upon the crucible, and contemplate transformation

SIXTH do not disturb your Punkin. It is not ready. These things take time.

SEVENTH

DING - it is ready to take out of the oven! DO NOT TOUCH; the Punkin is hot. Let it rest until it is cool enough, about ten minutes. Enjoy a coffee while you wait and JUST LOOK AT HOW BEAUTIFUL IT IS💖

EIGHTH slice off the stem and cut the Punkin in half. Do not regret this step; the Punkin was made for this. It is rejoicing, because that’s what Punkins do.

NINTH scoop out the seeds with a fork; DO NOT THOW AWAY THOSE SEEDS - those are pepitas and they are good for you. We will roast them later…

TENTH make the Punkin pretty; add a tasty oil, like coconut, or olive, or butter. Do not scimp, and make sure to put some orange pepper on there because it is amazing. Put those pepitas in the refrigerator!

ELEVENTH scoop soemthing delicious into your baked Punkin Bowl. I chose delicious Orange Rosemary Lentils with cabbage because it is fall, y’all and Lentils taste like a Grandma came back from Heaven🥹

TWELFTH serve it with an Orange to someone you love; even if that someone is just you, you deserve something nice, like this beautiful Baked Punkin.
See? It is made with love and Jesus...

EAT IT💖I made it for you...

~FIN~

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedInbetween the pages of the musty strands of rhymeI am wending, wand'ring in the dusty sands of timestraddling the seconds as the hour and minutes climbwhere I’m waiting for the Walker between WorldsDancing down the days inside an hourglass of stonewhere the willowwind meets longing in a whippoorwill, alonein the misty moonlit mountains I can hear the mourners moanthere I’m waiting for the Walker between WorldsIn the fire and the fury and the rending of the veilwhen the Gates of Heaven open, hear the Demons weep and wailas Good ascends, amending ends and Evil finally failI am waiting for the Walker between WorldsCome Thou King of Kings, the Walker between Worlds…