An Abundance of Gratitude

Hello to everyone and welcome back to The Stone Soup Cook! I’m indeed grateful that you’re here!

For my post this week and next, I will be focusing on the Super Bowl of food: Thanksgiving dinner. I’m sure you’re shocked!

In the next few days, I’ll be sharing recipes I grew up with for my basic Thanksgiving meal menu. Since everyone has their own traditions around Thanksgiving, this list is only a template for some turkey-day basics: turkey, dressing, yams, cranberry sauce, gelatin salad, three-bean salad and pecan pie. My roots are solidly based in southern food traditions, which you’ll see reflected in my versions of all these holiday favorites. I’ll be throwing in a couple of my other favorites that I always make for the holiday that aren’t as traditional, but that are always well-received and fan favorites. And wine–always wine!

As with every holiday, I have complicated feelings about Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, holidays can be fraught with unresolved emotional issues. However, I do try to always make the best of Thanksgiving because it really is all about the food and sharing that food with loved ones–be it family you were born with or the family you choose…or, indeed, the family you find in unexpected places.

My dad taught at a large university for 40 years. Throughout those years, my parents frequently found themselves serving as stand-in parents to any number of dad’s graduate students. Those students always had something in common: they were always hungry. My childhood is punctuated with memories of my dad calling my mom to ask if he could bring one of his graduate students home for dinner, furtively whispering “he looks really hungry, honey.” With the phone cradled on her shoulder, mom would open the pantry cabinet door to see if she had an extra can of tomato sauce to stretch the spaghetti sauce for one more serving that night. Somehow, mom always managed to come up with another can of tomato sauce, vegetables or bread, and students frequently crowded around our dining room table, sitting on the piano bench or other makeshift seat. The stray students were smart and interesting and funny and eclectic–and most of all, grateful. We learned from them and they learned from us. And isn’t that what life is all about? Learning from each other?

For me, it was learning through the shared experience of breaking bread together.

To this day, I love breaking bread with friends and strangers alike. Prior to the pandemic, Mr. Stone Soup and I used to host several large, unruly, diverse and truly delightful dinner parties in our home. Each year, I would learn new things from this motley and wonderful assortment of people I call my “California family.” They are all dear to me and have expanded my knowledge, experience and love of people in so many ways.

Every year, in addition to opening our home to our friends and family, we also try to find new ways to break bread with new people. In 2017, the pastor at our church requested that I serve as the host for the Men’s Rotating Shelter at our church. I wasn’t overly enthusiastic about this task, but (somewhat reluctantly) agreed to do it, primarily because it involved feeding people. Our church was to provide food and shelter to about 10 homeless men for about 6 weeks, starting in mid-October, and continuing through Thanksgiving. Each evening, it was my job to make sure these men had a hot meal and a comfortable, safe place to stay. What I initially saw as somewhat of a burden, became a truly wonderful lesson in love and hospitality.

I started by asking the parishioners at church to sign up to provide meals each night for the men who would be staying with us. Our church is very small and I envisioned myself having to carry most of the load by cooking meal after meal for the men to make sure they had food every night. But, remembering all those hungry graduate students, I was committed to making sure these strangers were fed every night.

What I received was an overwhelming outpouring of contributions of food and companionship from parishioners at our church to people they’d never met. I did provide meals for the men on four nights, but because I wanted to–not because I had to. And although I was prepared to provide the Thanksgiving feast, I was relegated only to assisting, as there was actually competition among the parishioners to feed our guests the big meal.

And those men were grateful–and humble. And instead of being strangers, they became people with lives who mattered to us.

I was there almost every night, just to check in and make sure everyone was comfortable and well-fed. On the first or second night, I greeted one of the guests and asked if he needed anything to make his stay more comfortable and he looked at me with tired eyes and said “you’re sweet to be so kind to us Keri, but we’re homeless; you don’t have to care so much about us.”

At that moment, I made it my mission to make sure those men got the best, most satisfying meals they’d ever had–turkey, dressing, cornish game hens, fresh asparagus, pecan pie, braised short ribs, you name it. And with the help of many dedicated parishioners, they did. On many nights, Mr. Stone Soup and I ate with our guests and listened to their stories and prayed with them and for them. The men were people who had made some bad decisions or who had had a run of bad luck in their lives and needed some help at a vulnerable time. They were hungry–for food, for companionship, for kindness, for shelter and for community. And dining room tables in our parish hall brought us all together to make that happen.

We all eat. It is one of the most basic of human needs. We must eat to survive, but it is the bonding that happens when we share a meal that makes the world a better place: it is the relationships built by sharing that simple, joyous and ancient ritual of coming together to break bread that provides the spice of life. This blog embraces and celebrates the central place to food has in all of our lives.