sweasel.com

Playing hooky from the In-laws’ gathering. Planning for some alone time: pizza for lunch while at the range (few hundred rounds of pew-pew-pew!), then steak/shrimp/bacon on the grill for dinner. Wheat beer(s) and a long hike with my borzoi in the evening.

Have a glorious day, Stoaty and UncleB!

Our nearest family is 500 miles away…thank God! We’ve done friendsgiving for over 25 years. The holidays are sooooo much more fun when you get to choose who you spend them with! So we’re hosting a small group of 8 tomorrow. Deep fried turkey ( we’re southern folk so we’ll be safe- been doing it for 30+ years), Brussels sprouts roasted with pancetta, shallots and chestnuts, cornbread dressing with sausage and chestnuts, mashed taters, gravy, cranberry relish, bread, cherry pie and pecan pie. All washed down with an extravagant amount of wine and whiskey. I ordered new pants with elastic waist just for the season!

We’re simplifying this year. Brunch instead of dinner. Saturday instead of Thursday. And the menu consists of pies: Pumpkin pie, pecan pie, chocolate cream pie and coconut cream pie.

Of course, this is simplified for everyone but me, since I’m making all the pies. Not realy sure how that happened.

We already had our Thanksgiving here in Canuckistan…got most of my Xmas shopping done today before the ‘merkins buy it all during their Black Friday frenzy :+)

…isn’t Amazon wonderful?…how did we ever do without it?

We have out-of-country visitors who’ve never done an American Thanksgiving so we are going to do all the classics: a ham, a turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, yams, brussel sprouts, 3 bean salad, rolls, and two kinds of pie; not to mention the various minor sides and salads. The only mandatory item that won’t make the list, much to my disappointment, is mince-meat pie. No matter how I try to spin things, Mrs Vegetable can use an English/Japanese dictionary and the idea of a sweet meat from a jar put in a pie just turns her off.

Bread and water for me. Got buried in snow on grocery shopping day and I used that as an excuse to stay inside. Now it’s the crowds, (mobs, actually). If I can hold on until early Sunday morning when all the drunks are still hung over and all the nice church people are in church, and all the ordinary working slubs are sleeping in, then I might have the store to myself for a few hours.

Bread and water isn’t all that bad, but it is ‘ell on my eczeema.

For some strange reason, my beloved spouse feels she must cook a turkey or she has failed as a wife, mother, citizen. The funny part is she is from Thailand, so turkey dinner is not part of her culture. This year, we will be bringing dinner to our son’s home and because of the driving time involved, I put my foot down and insisted on beef or ham, since I don’t want food poisoning. So we ordered a “cooked for you” prime rib dinner for 8 from the local grocery. Note that there will only be 4 of us. There should be plenty of food.
Somehow, this afternoon, a small turkey has magically appeared in the fridge. I inquired about it and was told it was “just in case there wasn’t enough food”. And just in case THAT isn’t enough food, one of her friends gave us 3 or 4 dozen home made tamales.
It’s a good thing I made room in the chest freezer “just in case”.

Happy Thanksgiving, all!

being single and geographically challenged up here in the frozen freakin north, i’m spending the day with my ownself like i usually do….blissfully wrapped in the relaxing quiet of my hovel. 7 course meal planned…… moose bratwurst & a 6 pack.

Younger daughter and I are headed to the coast to my sister’s, and since she doesn’t cook we are bringing pretty much everything, the traditional stuff. Nothing fancy. I never get invited to the fancy family parties, so holidays are low key.

Unless I go to Norway for Christmas…Norwegians really know how to do Christmas!

Do forget to tell them that they should present gifts. Also those who aren’t cheerful do dishes.

I may have made-mention of this before ’round These Pages – if so, apologies all around, and bear with it just a bit: Every year on Turkey-Day, a bunch of us volunteer-minded folkses foregather at a local church that has an especially-nice (and capacious-biggish) gymnasium/auditorium and (attached) kitchen facility, beginning about 7 – 7:30 A.M.-ish – purpose: Assembly-line-style prep of Thanksgiving dinners (complete from dinner roll to dessert), brown-shopping-bagging, and fan-out delivery of same to a WHOLE hulley-gulley bunch of folks who would otherwise be served same by the local Meals On Wheels volunteer folks and various rest-home kitchens or retirement-village staffs – thus giving the M.O.W. vols et.al. the day off to be with their families. It takes a lot of logistics – including no small amount of pre-prep activities (Son-in-law and Daughter do a big chunk of the turkey-prep – day-before thaw-out of around 75 [!] frozen Butterball turkeys [they use the back-deck hot tub, do ’em all at once – THAT is quite a sight!], followed by grilling on their competition-size/style trailer-mounted gas grill [’bout 10 birds at a crack], followed by half-a-dozen folks carving, slicing and foil-wrapping many, MANY equally-weighed turkey portions, which then go into big foil pans and into the coolers. Takes until about midnite to git ‘er done…). After completion of assembly, bagging and fan-out deliveries (using pre-planned routing instructions) and a bit of clean-up at the church facilities, everyone goes off to their own personal Turkey-Day gatherings/proceedings…Been doing this for seven years, now; whole (local) family involved for us, we now get around 75 – 80 or more volunteer folks helping, with many “family” groups, including the kids – first year, we did about 750 – 800 meals total, using about 45 – 50 folks; this past year, the total was just under 1,200 meals – likely will be even bigger this year. (Daughter tells me they’re working-on getting another couple to do some of the turkeys – volume is getting to be too much for them to be the only cook-and-prep setup) TOO MUCH FUN!!

We (our [local] family) will gather beginning ’round Noon-ish at Son-in-law/Daughter’s place down on the island (just to the South of town, coastal-barrier island), and have our traditional early-P.M. dinner – grill-cooked turkey, Honey-Baked ham, oyster/onion dressing, green-bean casserole, corn-puddin’, smashed-‘taters (Son makes those, using my kitchen) AND candied yams, BOTH dinner rolls AND Southern-style cornbread (more like “cake” than “bread”, of course), ‘shroom gravy…Punkin’ and PEE-can pie, mebbe a li’l ice cream – later a bit, when we can manage it.

Dee-Troit Lions and Some Other Guys on the big wall-mounted toob in the Traditional Turkey-Day dust-up…couple of cold “adult beverages” to accompany all…

A good day – we’re a veritable hot-bed of Trump M.A.G.A. folkses, so no danger of verbal (or physical) “philosophical” fisticuffs…

If it gets any better than this – I choose not to know about it! Happy holiday, y’all, from Coastal NC…

Hm. Argentium attempted to post this and it vanished into the ether:

= = = cut here = = =

Well, we’re delaying ours till the weekend so eldest daughter can be here, and we’re going to try a nice big ham this year. We found that doing turkey for Canadian Thanksgiving in October, followed by another turkey for American Thanksgiving in November, followed by yet ANOTHER turkey for Christmas was just too much.

Oh! Stoaty! Have you seen this post at Ace’s? It’s a weird conjunction of classic rock tunes being done on a traditional Korean gayageum with an electric pickup. I know how much you love banjos, and I figured this might also be up your alley: Luna Lee And Her Mighty Gayageum
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/367018.php

= = = cut here = = =

It was NOT in the spam bucket. If you get a comment vanish unexpectedly, drop me a line, please.

Stoaty: Thanks much. Not sure what happened there… Let’s see if THIS comment gets through.

[ edit ] Yup, made it through like it normally would. Must have been a glitch on the last one. *shrugs*

Happy Thanksgiving! God bless the house of the Stoat and Badger.

Husband and I are alone this weekend. I didn’t buy the usual holiday groceries because we were traveling to the panhandle. Alas, those plans changed. But I have a casserole in the freezer—think lasagna noodles but with chicken and poblano peppers and other chilies, white cheeses in bechamel sauce. Salad. Fresh Apple Cake (one bowl, one apple—oh it so good).

The Cowboys play at three o’clock. Husband gets a morning nap AND and afternoon nap.

Red Velvet Cupcakes and gin should be on every Thanksgiving menu! Happy Thanksgiving everyone and all who dwell in Badger House.

Low key for once in a few years. Bought the dinner-in-a-box from the Whole Paycheck on the other side of the hill, looks like 2 hours to brown the bird and warm everything up. The way The Boy eats, I expect it to look like the cartoons- a whole bird one minute, skeleton the next. Then, I will continue to engage in battles with dead German electrical and mechanical engineers. Will likely lose again, but that’s OK. They have me surrounded, they’ve no where to escape!

And I’d be telling all the neighbors of the traditional gifting of Hendricks Gin or Cazadores Tequila to all ‘Mercans when we are away from our homeland on Thanksgiving

Made the trek to the in-laws last night. Been married 32 years and they still honor one of my family’s traditions—sauerkraut. My grandfather on my moms side was of Germanic decent and always requested it be served along with the standard sides. I grew up thinking it was standard Pilgrim fare. My request to have the pickled cabbage added to the menu on that first Thanksgiving with my in-laws oh so many years ago was looked upon skeptically—they were still worried if I was the right ‘one’ for their daughter. I’m happy to say Nana already has a pot simmering and the unique smell of my youth is vindication they decided I was ‘OK’. For that I am thankful.

Today is smoked turkey, Saturday is roasted turkey with the descendants. All the classics plus garden victuals of my youth.

About ready to lower the turkey into the fryer. Also going to do a corn pudding. Both going to my parents’ house later.

BTW I always thought the Brits celebrated Thanksgiving on July 4?