From scratch on Thanksgiving
My pies, fresh from the oven.
Carl Sagan famously said "if you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you first need to invent the universe."
Every year our tradition is that I make, from scratch, the apple pies and the pumpkin pies. I think I can remember a time when I baked the pumpkins and scraped out the innards and mash it up. Now that was from scratch! These days it means opening a can of already smashed up pumpkin and mixing it with the eggs, milk, cinnamon, and other ingredients.
We peel the apples, slice them thinly, and cover them with sugar. Shake the cinnamon on top. A few pads of butter.
But I don't start from scratch. Not in the way Sagan describes.
It is like I said to a class at Cornell yesterday, something so simple and obvious that escapes most business people: nature is the ultimate supplier. It is only nature that has started from scratch.
Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family.