Thanksgiving in Sandy Thomas’ youth reliably meant driving for eight hours across Pennsylvania to spend the holiday with her grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins at her grandparents’ crowded but happy home.
“We would arrive at midnight (the night before), and I’d wake up in the morning and smell potato buns baking and the turkey cooking,” she recalled. “These were the smells of Thanksgiving.”
Today, Thomas has inherited making her grandmother’s potato buns at her own Thanksgiving dinners, a holiday she adores. So, when I was looking for a Thanksgiving-themed column, Becky Baxter Clark suggested I speak with Thomas, who makes the day special every year for friends and family.
Thomas’ kitchen is a warm, welcoming place. She spends four days a week working at the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Center for Agriculture, Food and the Environment, and devotes a lot of her spare time to community events. She teaches Sunday school and helps shepherd projects like the new dinosaur-and-bee pocket park at Greenfield’s parking garage.
Her favorite day of the week is Friday, when she and her husband, Russ, take care of their grandson, Julian. Thomas had just put Julian down for a nap when photographer Paul Franz and I arrived one Friday. The room smelled of happiness and potato buns — in short, of Thanksgiving.
Thomas explained that the bun recipe came from her maternal grandmother. Her grandparents were not rich in material goods; her grandfather was a coal miner with a second-grade education, and her grandmother was a homemaker who loved to garden and cook.
“They didn’t have a lot of money, but they had a lot of will to create things,” Thomas remembered. She showed off carvings her grandfather made from pieces of wood, along with paper stars her family loved to make each Thanksgiving to hang on the Christmas tree.
She views these creations as “kind of a metaphor for Thanksgiving.” To her, they represent the giving of themselves her grandparents practiced every day.
Thomas and her sister spent every summer at their grandparents’ home, helping out in the vast garden and working at the local fair.
“I feel like I had a blessed childhood, and Thanksgiving was a big part of that,” she said with a smile. “I really am lucky that I have good memories of Thanksgiving.”
Thomas started making the potato buns as an adult when she and her husband moved to Greenfield 40 years ago. They are an integral part of the Thanksgiving dinner she cooks yearly for 20 to 25 relatives and friends.
“I watched my grandmother make them. I’m trying to recreate some of that time,” she said.
Thomas elaborated on her love of Thanksgiving.
“It’s not commercial,” she explained. “It’s the one day of the year when you can be just family.”
When I’m going crazy dealing with my family and all the cooking this year on Thanksgiving, I’ll remember Thomas’ serene, happy and thankful attitude about the holiday. And I know I’ll make her potato buns. They are delightful little pockets of bread, surprisingly light in texture and rich in taste.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Ingredients:
Enough potatoes to make 1 cup mashed potatoes
Milk and butter as needed for mashed potatoes
¾ cup sugar
1 package yeast
¼ cup melted vegetable shortening
¼ cup vegetable oil
3 eggs, beaten and slightly warmed
1 tsp. salt
4 to 5 cups white flour
Warm butter as needed for finishing
Boil the potatoes, then drain them, but reserve one cup of the water in which they were cooked. Add a small amount of milk and butter to the potatoes, and mash them. Make sure you have one cup of mashed potatoes. Set the potatoes aside to cool.
Let the cup of potato water cool to lukewarm, then dissolve the yeast in it. Let the yeast and water sit for a few minutes to proof (that is to say, until the yeast comes to life and bubbles up).
Stir the yeasty water into the cooled potatoes. Let the mixture stand until it becomes just a little bubbly on top (about 10 minutes).
Stir in the shortening and vegetable oil, followed by the eggs and the salt. Stir in enough flour to make a soft dough. The dough will be sticky.
Let the dough rise in its bowl until it doubles in bulk (two to two-and-a-half hours). The dough should be covered with a slightly damp dishtowel. A little warm water in a couple of bowls nearby helps with the rising process.
Punch the dough down. With lightly floured hands, shape the dough into small, rough balls. Do not over-handle the dough.
Place the balls, touching each other, in a lightly buttered glass pan (or pans, depending on size), covered with a slightly damp towel. Let the dough rise again until it puffs up nicely (about 45 minutes).
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Bake the buns until they are golden brown on top (about 12 to 15 minutes). As soon as you take them out of the oven, brush or rub warm butter on top.
Makes two to three dozen buns.
Tinky Weisblat is the author of “The Pudding Hollow Cookbook,” “Pulling Taffy,” and “Love, Laughter, and Rhubarb.” Visit her website, TinkyCooks.com.