The week before Thanksgiving, I received an email from a friend. She was hosting Thanksgiving dinner and needed a recipe for stuffing. She’d been on line looking, but those recipes were all fancy ingredients. She wanted stuffing like her mother made. She’d talked with another friend and they both came to the same conclusion: Ask Carol.

I told her I was going to do exactly what my mother did. There isn’t a recipe for what Mom did, but I told her everything I remembered. In fact, everything I planned to do when I made stuffing this year. She was delighted. Mom’s recipe of dried bread, giblet broth, eggs, onion, celery & sage was exactly it.

When I compiled the menu for the Thanksgiving dinner I planned to serve, I dug out the recipe Mom always used for fruit salad. More like a desert with the coconut and marshmallows and nuts, but nothing says “holiday dinner” to me like Mom’s salad.

As we were getting ready to bring everything to the table on Thanksgiving Day, the phone rang. My niece in Colorado wondered how many potatoes to peel for a dinner group of 15.  I could almost feel Mom leaning in to listen as we talked; I could see Mom nodding her head as we arrived at a number. My niece left the call with the confidence she wouldn’t let their guests be underfed.

This morning, I pulled out the bread board my dad made for me back in 1967 to roll out the egg noodles to finish out the turkey soup I’d started from the Thanksgiving Day bird. I’d made noodles with Mom and Grandma dozens of times. Today, I shared Mom’s recipe for egg noodles with a friend on Facebook.

I’d heard on a news report this week that most people just throw the carcass away! My mother would never have done that, and you can be sure I am my mother’s daughter.

It’s times like this week that remind me how much of my mother lives on in me. How much confidence I feel knowing that I’m using recipes and sharing wisdom that’s “Mom Tested.” It’s a great feeling.

In case you’ve never made egg noodles but would like to try, here’s the recipe. Super easy!

Mom’s Egg Noodles

1 cup flour
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs

Mix it all together. Turn out on a floured board. You may need to work in a little more flour if the dough is sticky. Roll the dough out thin. Sprinkle a little flour on the dough and roll it up like a jelly roll. Cut into thin strips. Unroll the noodles so they don’t stick together and let them dry for a while. Drop them into boiling soup.