Nutmeg in our veins: A Thanksgiving memory that lives on through one perfect dish

My mom, when she wanted to be, was an amazing cook and baker. She just seldom wanted to be. We sometimes had to beg.

Her peach pie was legendary. She tried to teach my wife to make it so the legend could live on, but I believe that greatness died eight years ago with Mom. The recipe still exists, but all who have tried have failed, myself included.

When I would visit my parents at Thanksgiving later in their lives, we would ask for the peach pie and she would quickly point out that peaches were not in season. Never mind that she could make better peach pie using canned peaches that had been on a lazy Susan for 27 years than others could make with midseason peaches straight off the truck from a Georgia orchard 30 miles away.

I’ll have to settle for my memories of it.

I have a bunch of recipes like that one for the peach pie. All handwritten on 3-by-5-inch note cards, which she kept in a little wooden box. With most of them I can make relatively reasonable facsimiles of Mom’s versions. The homemade Thousand Island dressing is always a crowd-pleaser.

Most of it is pretty easy. Simple ingredients, simple directions, simple outcomes. Mom was the ultimate no-spice white cook. Side note: I learned from my college students that not using spices in our cooking is a common stereotype other races have of white people.

They’re not wrong. Mom once ordered scallops at a South Carolina seafood joint and admonished the server before she even placed the order. If there were any spices, she sharply scolded, “I’m sending them back.”

I had to chase down the server and beg her not to spit in my mom’s food and explain that Mom was just a little cantankerous when it came to her palate.

Then there was Thanksgiving. She made the most typical Thanksgiving meal possible: turkey, mashed potatoes, giblet gravy, green beans (maybe even a casserole), dinner rolls, a side salad and cranberry sauce. Or, as we called it (and I’m guessing others do too), “canberry.” You know, the good stuff that slides out in the shape of the can from whence it came.

And stuffing. Mom’s homemade stuffing. It was the thing that turned the blandest of the bland Thanksgiving meal into the perfect feast. It was the side-dish equivalent of her peach pie.

These are the things I remember about Thanksgivings long gone by: cranberries in the shape of a can and homemade stuffing. I had no need for anything else.

The stuffing could not have been simpler. Dried bread, onions, celery, pepper, some chicken broth and butter.

Oh, and nutmeg. One spice. Unless you count pepper. Then two spices.

Nutmeg was the key. I’d include the recipe, but you lack the genetics to make this work. I can’t make the peach pie, but I can make the stuffing, and I can bring Mom back to life for a glorious moment or two.

She took great pride in the stuffing. Not for how good it was, but for the reaction it created — seemingly the only thing her family ever agreed on.

The heir has asked me a time or two to teach him to cook things. Beginner stuff for now: a grilled cheese sandwich, scrambled eggs or a quick plate of pasta.

Eventually he will learn to make the stuffing. It’s really no harder than a box of Kraft Mac and Cheese.

But he’ll make it better than someone else would. He’ll get the nutmeg right. Because his grandmother, of whom he has little memory, instilled it.

Some have ice water in their veins. My family has nutmeg.

So he will make stuffing like a pro. And eventually the heir’s heirs, and theirs, will beg for it too.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.