Thanksgiving Reflections
We had wonderful Thanksgiving, thank you very much!
Most of that was because all I had to do was show up. Our daughter and her husband did all the planning, the preparations, and the cooking. And they’re very good at it. Especially the cooking. There wasn’t one dish that could have been improved. Kudos!
I don’t want to give the impression that we didn’t contribute at all. We were in charge of the pies. Which we bought.
My mother-in-law made delicious dessert breads at Christmas and my husband brought that to our marriage. My mom made cookies, primarily the almond Christmas tree press cookies and the best Peanut Butter Blossoms. Together we create quite a spread.
But neither of us ever got into the art of pie-making and, even if we wanted to, we’re so busy we’d be hard-pressed to find the time. But it’s okay, the store’s pies were very good.
It was a smallish group and very relaxed. On the one hand, a large group can be fun and give us the chance to connect with people we don’t see often. But it’s also nice to have everyone sitting around and talking as a group. As I said, relaxed.
I want to point out that this isn’t the first time they’ve hosted a major holiday. They’ve done it frequently. But I will never tire of someone ese doing all that work, especially since we did it all for decades.
We had gotten a free turkey at the grocery store and decided to cook it on Sunday. We enjoy turkey and the leftovers are terrific. I hear many people are tired of it--they claim that it’s dry. Doesn’t everyone know about roasting bags? We were probably being overly optimistic about how much turkey we could consume on our own, but thought it was worth a try.
The turkey spent its first three days with us in a cooler in the garage, so it was mostly defrosted. This is the best solution we’ve found to keeping it bacteria-free before cooking. The idea of defrosting it in the refrigerator is laughable. One, there was never enough room for a large turkey along with everything else that we store there. And two. it didn’t work.
My husband brought the turkey in and put it in the sink to start the preparation. He took off the mesh bag, and there were two large slashes forming a T in the plaster wrapper. We just stood there and stared at it for a few minutes, then agreed it wasn’t worth the risk, and put it directly into the trash can.
I was so very, VERY THANKFUL that we weren’t having guests arrive in a couple of hours.