Making my Thanksgiving shopping list, I thought of my older brother, Phil, his memory an indelible part of the holiday for me. As adults, we seldom saw each other and never sat down to a turkey dinner together. But I always tried to call him on Thanksgiving. He’d given me much to be grateful for.
John Phillip Jacobs was born with a love for cooking. He took joy in whipping up simple, tasty dishes with whatever we had on hand. More than 50 years later, I can still picture him, a shirt tied around his waist like an apron, sleeves flopping as he danced around our Oklahoma farmhouse kitchen.
Too bad my father, raising the four of us children on his own after my mother had left us, believed boys had no place in the kitchen.
One day, Dad