The smell of baked sweet potatoes and cornbread dressing always makes me grateful.
First off, I am grateful for the simple fact that sweet potatoes and dressing exist.
They are two of my favorite dishes and are tied for first place with purplehull peas and fried okra on the list of best things to eat that don’t come from a cow.
A baked sweet potato is a meal unto itself. You can slit one and drop in a few pats of butter, if you choose, but it isn’t necessary.
Just the sweet potato is all you really need.
And dressing. It combines several good things - cornbread, sage, chicken broth.
It, too, is a meal unto itself, as I have proven many times.
But the main thing is that they smell like Thanksgiving did at my grandma’s house when I was a kid.
Grandma Solomon had nine children who survived for me to know them, 26 grandchildren, quite a few great-grandchildren and a hefty roster of daughters- and sons-in-law and whatever you would call the people who marry your grandkids.
Holidays at her house were a big deal and the tribe would descend with food in hand.
For Thanksgiving, there would be a turkey or two, a couple of hams, more pecan pies than we could eat and miscellaneous vegetables.
There was a possum one year, too, but perhaps the less said about that the better.
And you could always count on sweet potatoes and dressing, which became my favorites.
She had a large kitchen and the food would be spread out on her table and along the counter and, as I recall, the strategy for getting what you wanted often involved trying to elbow larger and perhaps hungrier cousins out of the way.
While the rest of the family loaded up on ham and whatnot, I discovered I could have my way with the dressing and the sweet potatoes.
I have great memories of those days and of sitting around the living room after dinner,watching the Scrabble games and listening to my relatives laughing and my uncles making bad puns.
It was a good family to be a part of, and I am reminded of that every time I smell sweet potatoes and cornbread dressing.