Thanksgiving Calisthenics

OK, time to get warmed up and ready for the giving of thanks!

Today's pre-Thanksgiving exercise is "Who could you thank that perhaps you haven't before?" (stolen from Cafe Gratitude).

My answer: I have thanked this person before, but not in a long time, so the thank you is long overdue. It is my friend, Mary Ann. She is always in my corner and has gone above and beyond for me more times than I can count or maybe even care to admit. There is nothing that I cannot tell her and I'd trust her with anything.

I am so grateful to have her in my life AND she has had an enormous influence on me in the kitchen. In fact, when she taught cooking, I apprenticed with her which was fun, tiring and always resulted in me deep-frying little pieces of things like fried bananas.

Now, a confession: it took a long time for me to see the importance of gratitude. It is not something that came naturally to me. Maybe that's typical when you are younger anyway -- you tend to take things for granted. At times in my life when I have struggled, sometimes I would get the advice to "count your blessings" but I still didn't understand what that did for you. Then, a few years ago, I happened to be at a seminar and a speaker that I had never heard of before revealed the secret about gratitude: when you are focusing on gratitude, you are in the present moment and when you are in the present moment and the point of power is always in the present moment. So, there you go.

Now, who could you thank that perhaps you haven't before?