Sauerkraut

Here in Bawlmer Merlin we have sauerkraut with our Thanksgiving turkey. Don't know why only that it's the way it has always been. Of course that makes people living outside of Merlin (bawlmerese for Maryland) look at us as if we were drooling out of our ears. Cranberry sauce for god's sake or those sweat potatoes with the burned marshmallows or even that stupid green bean dish with canned onion whatevers sprinkled on top but SAUERKRAUT?
My mother's sauerkraut was rinsed within an inch of its life and cooked with fresh polish sausage and barley. Fresh sausage was an unappealing gray color and the barley was soft and mushy. My own sauerkraut comes from a can and is slightly rinsed and for years I ate it alone so I always bought a small can of it. And then, older son shocked the hell out of me and made the sauerkraut for last year's thanksgiving. It seems that he discovered that he LIKED IT!!! Now to realise how odd this is, this was the kid who for his first six years of life was serenaded with "Eat Josh Eat' at every meal. One thanksgiving at my parents, they nagged older son so that his eyes filled with tears as he leaned over his plate and threw up everything he had eaten. He was only three but it was enough for them to leave him alone that year. So you can imagine my surprise when he made sauerkraut, unrinsed with no gray lumps of sausage but cooked with a green apple and a pig tail. (forgi ve me Dottie and DearHeart) He got the recipe form a friend's mother who has also introduced him to fried chicken, collard greens and mac and cheese made from scratch. He's cooking it now and my stomach is already grumbling at me. Older son has always been a help at thanksgiving. he and I seem to work as if we possess a single brain. When we used to go to my sister's or my mother's it was alway sbedlam at dinner, people flying around the kitchen, my sister calling upon Dear Sweet Jesus to make her gravy thicken, my mother proudly claiming she made REAL mashed potatoes and not that STUFF from a box. (Hey! The men love boxed potatoes) The mother and sister never wanted to come to my house and so we went there each thanksgiving but I finally put an end to it, the year we had pink turkey for dinner. My mother got the idea of roasting the turkey in a paper bag. Why, I have no idea. My sister followed that cooking tip and one year as she carved into the bird it ran pink. The meat was pink the juice coming out of it was pink and when I suggested that it wasn't quite done she told me it was because the skin had turned brown. When I tried to microwave opur meat, I was told that I as not allowed, that the meat was done and nuking it would make it tough. It was a good thing that my contribution was a salad because that's mostly what we ate. I still get queasy just thinking about it. I'll concentrate on the sauerkraut smells instead. Yum.