Give thanks and remembrance

Magnet #279 - age fotostock spaghetti

Another bit of stock photo company swag, this time from age fotostock. I know it seems odd to pick spaghetti for Thanksgiving, but here's why.

I mentioned a while back that my parents always had to serve two different meals for us kids. Always the seafood for my dad, and then whatever meal (whether Filipino or American) for us. With the exception of scrambled eggs, my Mom is the best. cook. EVER. Seriously. And she's adventurous, never afraid to try out new recipes.

Which is good, considering we also grew up with public school cafeteria food - square pizzas, tacos, funny little hamburgers, lasagna, meatloaf and mashed potatoes, spaghetti, cheese toast, etc. So every so often, we would come home, and tell mom how good our lunch was, and then she'd set about recreating it, bigger and obvi, way better than the caf.

So we basically grew up on Filipino food and mom's tasty versions of all-American dishes. Which makes sense that the first few Thanksgivings I remember - we didn't have turkey. Or stuffing. Or sweet potatoes. Generally, we'd have whatever mom felt like making, and one year, I distinctly remember having spaghetti. For Thanksgiving. I remember, because I had, as only a little kid could ever have, a really bad habit of taking a bite of spaghetti, and wiping my mouth on my sleeve. Drove my mother NUTS.

An aside: I love my mom's spaghetti. If I were on death row, mom's spaghetti and a big, big breakfast (of scrambled eggs, sausage and hash browns and ketchup, probably from Denny's), would be my last meal. I recently met up with a childhood friend of mine who I hadn't seen in almost 20 years, and she said, you know what I miss of your mom's cooking? Her spaghetti.

Seriously. It's magical. /end aside

Then one fateful day, my sister came home from school and asked for a real Thanksgiving...and all the trimmings. So no more spaghetti for Thanksgiving.

Thanks for that, dude.