For the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing Thanksgiving recipes and then Christmas recipes–not necessarily from ancestors, but then I’m somebody’s ancestor, too.

Mixing generations. Left-cut glass bowl from Hattie Stout; top meat platter from Hattie Stout; center my own cut glass bowl, shallow china bowl my wedding china, wicker basket with pyrex dish a wedding present. This year, we had all the food on this table, and we ate at another table. Too much food to fit where we ate.

It is time to think about Thanksgiving dinner. Who’s hosting? Who’s cooking which Thanksgiving recipes? The answers varied with the generations and as people moved around the country. I remember the lavish spreads that my own Grandmother Vera Anderson laid out for the family.  I imagine that some of the daughters-in-law brought dishes, but I don’t know what.  I know that everyone pitched in to get the good china and crystal and silver on the long table.

I also know that inevitably, when everyone had pushed back from the table, exhausted by gobbling up two kinds of meat, dresssing, potatoes, numerous vegetables and a couple different pies and a cake–Grandma Vera would inevitably say, “Well I don’t know why I go to all this bother. You didn’t eat anything.”  Because, of course, there was a mountain of food to start out with, and a slightly smaller mountain of food at the end of the meal.

Since I don’t have a lot of grandma’s recipes for Thanksgiving, I’m going to share some of mine. Every year somebody says, “Now, don’t go to so much bother. Just cook a few things.”  Well, that would work, except that each person has his or her favorite–the one thing that they cannot do without, so decade by decade, the menu grows.

For my part, I like to mix things up a bit, and have the traditional turkey, sweet potatoes, dressing, pumpkin pie, but add something that is related but not traditional.

One of the non-traditional Thanksgiving recipes that has proved to be a great favorite is a recipe  for frozen fruit dessert that I pulled long ago from that Joy of Jell-O cookbook I told you about earlier. This is particularly popular with kids, who think they are eating ice cream for their main course. I like that creamy goodness, too, but mainly I like the bright color it brings to the table.

Frozen Fruit Salad

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Ingredients

• 1 6-oz box strawberry Jell-o (or your choice of flavor)
• 2 cups boiling water
• 1 can pineapple chunks
• 2/3 cups mayonnaise
• 2 cups sour cream
• 1 cup grapes (seedless, halved)
• 1 can fruit cocktail (drained)
• extra marashino cherries (opt.)
• 1/2 cup walnuts (chopped (If no one in the family is allergic to them))

Directions

1.	Drain and reserve juice from pineapple
2.	Dissolve jello in boiling water
3.	Add 1 cup of the drained juice, and the lemon juice.
4.	Using hand blender or regular blender, blend in mayo.
5.	Chill until thick
6.	Stir in sour cream, fruit and nuts.
7.	Pour into two 8/9-inch loaf pans and freeze.
8.	When ready to serve, run warm water in the sink or a large pan and hold the frozen pan in the warm water until you can shake the salad away form the edges of the pan. Slice and serve on individual plates on a lettuce leaf.