"We Come T' Eat."

My dad's family is very clannish. As in, they came over here wholesale to escape death by lack of potato. My great-grandmother had nine children. She's still alive, and so are eight of them. Two weeks ago, it was all nine.

Today was that side of the family's Great Big Thanksgiving. We have finally caved to necessity and rented a church hall instead of all just piling into Great-Grandmother's house, as we have in years past. If everyone we expected to show had shown, there would have been fifty-five people there.

There were actually more than fifty-five.

There are many great cooks in my family, all in the grandest Southern tradition. If it moves, fry it. If it doesn't move, either make a casserole out of it or fry it. We had a giant turkey, a ham, and smoked and fried chicken. And a great big pan of Great-Aunt Diane's dressing. Not to mention about fifteen kinds of casserole and many, many pies, though the star of the dessert table was as always my cousin Jason's bread pudding with rum sauce. My teetotaler great-aunts will go to war for the last of that rum sauce. Mmmm.

I still have one more Thanksgiving dinner left tomorrow. Oy.