SherriMLittleton

      For the first time since my mother's death 4 years ago, I made a decision to cook at home and not participate in a Friendsgiving this year. I have some of the loveliest people in my inner circle that have truly been there for me, but I needed to cook and recreate my mother's dishes. So that is what I did. I made a complete Thanksgiving dinner, like I've done many times before, but just for me. Although that may seem lonely for some, I delighted in prepping the same way my mother would for the holidays. I got up early in the morning, started on the pie and chopped the veggies, marinated the meat and made the sides. I was humming the entire time and loved it. But something different was that I added a bit of my grandmother's recipe into the dressing. I used celery, not celery salt but actually celery. Anyone that knows me understands how much I usually cannot stand the taste of celery. It was to the point that my mother stopped using it all together. But this year,

      As an only child, my mother would often make meals from scratch to suit both of our taste. However, as a kid, I was a picky eater. It was really difficult for me to try new things because I liked certain dishes more than others and wouldn't agree to anything else. As most kids, I loved mac n cheese. But specifically, I loved my mom's baked mac n cheese, to the point I wouldn't dare eat anyone else's.  I remember as a kid, everyone at our Baptist church and my mom's government job requested my mom's baked mac n cheese for potluck dinners. I refused to eat my friends' mothers box mac n cheese and only would trust a few family members recipes including my grandma and moms' sisters to also make it right. It even got to a point where my father remarried and tried to guilt me into saying his new wife mac n cheese was better than my mother's dish. I refused because even though I was a kid I knew I wasn't going to lie, especially about cooking.    

     I was recently thinking of a recipe for meal prep this upcoming week. My mother always made her meatloaf a certain way. Ingredients included Seasoned salt, black pepper, eggs, ground meat, ketchup, bell peppers and onions. So of course, as my parent, she taught me to cook her way but as the years went by, I would add my own ingredients as well. For instance, crumbled crackers or corn flakes acted as a binder while a teaspoon of sugar and salsa was the additional flavor to my mixture.       The same can go for the way I was raised to go through private schools, college and to get a full-time job to settle for and then retire. But no lol, I switched it up a bit. Because my mother put me in private schools most of my youth while financing it completely by herself, I was exposed to people with different options in life. Rich kids, poor kids, middle class kids, White and Black kids all had different views and religions than mine. Everyone competed for the next thing. Honestly that type