Happy Thanksgiving!
Happy Thanksgiving to my Canadian friends! Our Friends to the North celebrate Thanksgiving in much the same way we in the U.S. do. Get together with family, eat some turkey, stuffing, sides, maybe a pumpkin pie. Very nice. My loyal readers will remember that my darling husband, Ted, was born in Canada, and has citizenship there, though he’s not claimed it in any way at this point. Because we are a family that enjoys celebrating life when we can, we like to have a Thanksgiving feast in October, just us, and then again in November, with Ted’s family (my parents came to California last year and joined in, which was wonderful). So I spent the day cleaning and shopping and cooking. Set the table with our wedding china, crystal, and silver. I vowed years ago to start using it more often, but when I said those words, I lied them. (My little homage to Dr. Seuss there…anyone know which story?) So we haven’t broken out the good stuff all together in years. You know what? It was really nice. The table looked beautiful, the food was delicious (even if I do use Stove Top stuffing rather than making my own), and we had a really nice evening.
Here’s the menu:
Turkey and Stuffing for Two (I doubled the recipe)*- Sweet Potato Pudding
- Cranberry Sauce**
- Crescent Rolls (from the tube)
- Spinach Salad with pomegranate seeds, avocado, Granny Smith apples, and mandarin oranges, with Julie’s OJ and honey dressing.
- Dessert – a trio of tiny treats, which I purchased at the bakery. Fruit tart, petit fours, and cheesecake brownies.
We had flowers and candles and wine. It was lovely. Generally, we have Canadian Thanksgiving dinner on Monday evening, but this year it made sense to do it on Sunday, which appears to be more authentic anyway. So yay us! It was a little strange, though, as it got up to be almost 90 today, and the talk is about the Giants and their World Series dreams.
It’s Sunday evening as I write this. The Giants just lost game 2, but it’s best 4 out of 7, and it’s currently 1 game each, so don’t give up yet. (I pretend to care, when one of our local teams get this far. Truly, of course, why would I care? The players don’t know me or care about my victories and losses, so whatever.) Ted’s celebrating Thanksgiving by watching “The Walking Dead”. Ugh. I think I’ll read my book, this is far too gory for me.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
* The formatting here is bugging the crap out of me. I’ve fixed this list 3 times, and it keeps getting wonky. I’m going to have to ask you to just ignore how wrong the spacing is on the bullets here, if indeed they are rendering strangely on your screen. For me it’s fine once, then a mess again.
** I had a bit of trouble with my cranberry sauce. It’s early in the year for fresh cranberries, but I found frozen. I didn’t have time to thaw them before boiling with sugar and water. I don’t know if I didn’t boil them long enough or what, but after a couple of hours, they still hadn’t jelled. I read online to add a little pectin, which I didn’t have. I remember reading that apples have pectin, and I’ve made strawberry jam with strawberries, sugar, and apples, so I diced up about 1/3 of a Granny Smith apple and threw that in, cooked for maybe 8 minutes, and then let it cool. I had to put it in the freezer to get it cool in time for dinner, but it worked. Whew. Thanksgiving is NOT Thanksgiving without cranberry sauce.
5 Comments
Nance
Happy Canadian Thanksgiving! (You know how I adore All Things Canadian, so Ted is included.) I chuckled at this line in your post: “The players don’t know me or care about my victories and losses, so whatever.” It’s so true and so simple. Why DO we get so invested when, in all reality, and in the end, the pennant, the championship–it will mean absolutely nothing? Sigh. Sports. At least in my fantasy league, the victory means something.
I also am so very charmed by the philosophy you live by in which you take as many opportunities as possible to celebrate in your life. I like to think that we do that, but not, certainly, with the dedication that you do. I salute you.
J
Nance, do you get more satisfaction from your fantasy league? That’s wonderful indeed. The whole idea of fantasy leagues confuses the hell out of me. Moreso even than real sports. Except horse racing…generally I know the rules there. First horse wins. Unless he bumps someone or something untoward like that.
Thank you for the compliment on our philosophy. I took to heart some advice I received when I had been married about 1.5 years. It was the 7th anniversary of our first date, and I had gotten used to celebrating that, but felt a little silly doing so. I was chatting with my boss, and I told him that I wasn’t sure how to handle the date anniversary. He said, “Life can be really hard sometimes. Celebrate when you can.” That made good sense to me, and how much nicer to say, “Yes, look, I love you. You’re Canadian (or we went to dinner once all those years ago, or you got an A on your English paper when your teacher specifically said he doesn’t give As on the first paper of the year), let’s party.”
Nance
I won’t bore you with explanations about how fantasy leagues work; suffice it to say that the league I am in is run by Sam, my youngest, and also has in it Rick, Jared, Kait (my just-about-daughter), Tina (Sam’s terrific girlfriend), and a bunch of other guys who are jolly friends of the family and who I like very much.
I do get satisfaction from it because it scratches that little Itch I have for studying and learning and researching the very hell out of something, in this case NBA players and their performance stats. It gives me a chance to develop a whole new area of expertise in a field I’m marginally interested in anyway. And it’s lovely to be able to share this with my boys and my husband. (Not to mention the spirit of Cutthroat Competition, trades, etc. that hangs over our interactions from November through May.)
I feel about wine the way you feel about celebrations in general. There is no saving of wine here at the Dept. Cellars. Every bottle is up for grabs at any moment because any moment can be made special by a bottle of wine. Even if it’s just a pizza or cheese and crackers night, if we feel like cracking open a big bucks cab, then okay.
J
Mmmm. Wine. We have no collection. We buy a bottle, we drink a bottle, we buy another bottle, we drink another bottle.
Except…one bottle that is indeed saved, and as thus is not even in our house. Ted’s brother has a wine fridge, and this bottle is safely there, awaiting its magic day. The magic day will be the occasion of Maya’s 21st birthday. The bottle is a bottle of 1996 Dalla Valle Vineyards Maya, because I had to have it. The label is black with red lettering that says, “Maya”. ’96 of course being the year of her birth. So I hunted down the bottle and put it away back in ’98 or ’99, when it was first released. Maya says she wants that to be her first “legal” sip of alcohol.
Ted
You know, watching “The Walking Dead” makes me very thankful that I don’t live in a world overrun by zombies (aka “Walkers”) and humans who have lost all sense of humanity. 🙂