Thanksgiving is coming!

We had a few chilly days in the past week and when I went to bed last night, the cold sheets reminded me of spending the night at my grandparents' house back in the fifties. It was colder in those days than it is now partly because I was a kid with not an ounce of fat to insulate my skinny frame, but mostly because the house had no insulation whatsoever and was drafty enough to blow out a candle inside a hurricane globe sitting on the coffee table. When we kids laid in bed we could see the stars shining through the cracks in the ceiling and roof of the rackety old, long neglected house. I swear it was actually colder inside the house sometimes than it was outside.

Life for my grandparents was basic, very basic, even by the meager standards of rural Georgia back in those days. Uncovered light bulbs hung from a single electrical cord in the middle of the room. There was no running water which meant there was no inside toilet. The only source of heat came from the coal fireplace in each room, but no one ever had a fire in more than one room of the house no matter how much frost there was on the pumpkins outside. In the kitchen there was an ice box, a wash stand and an electric stove. The coal stove was over in the corner. The dinner table sat in the center of the room and served multiple purposes from food preparation to consumption, then afterward as the entertainment center for adult gossip sessions, for arguments and children playing games.

As we approach Thanksgiving, there are those memories that stimulate the five senses and can almost put us right back there in that same place and time. Sweet potato pie is one of them...so here is my recipe taken from an old family recipe. Hope you like it. If you do, remember the words of Paul "Bear" Bryant, "Why don't you call yo mama, I sure wish I could call mine." If your mama is still around, give her a call.

Sweet Potato Pie*

1 ½ cups sugar
3 eggs
1 ½ cups smashed sweet potatoes
1+ tspn vanilla extract
½ cup milk
1 uncooked pie crust

Directions:

Peel sweet potatoes; cover with water in a Dutch oven and cook until soft.
Mix sugar and eggs, then add in the potatoes and vanilla extract, and finally add milk.
After mixing thoroughly, pour mixture into the uncooked pie shell and bake in a preheated oven @ 350° F for one hour.

* This is a sweet potato pie, not a pumpkin pie. It should taste like sweet potatoes, not pumpkin, nutmeg, or allspice.