We didn't take many pictures of Thanksgiving yesterday. I thought about pulling out the camera and taking pictures of everything, but I just wanted to be there in the moment (so you'll have to look at pictures of other things instead). Plus, I was a little busy making the entire meal all by myself! For the last 11 years, Mark has done everything from cooking the turkey to mashing the potatoes. He doesn't really trust me to make a turkey. So, how did I end up making the Thanksgiving meal myself?
A few weeks ago, I decided I was tired of looking at half of a tom we raised two springs ago. I pulled him out and defrosted him. I didn't really think about Thanksgiving and how close it was. If I had been thinking, I would have waited! But there I was, ready to make a turkey half two weeks before Thanksgiving. We ate the leg over two or three meals, I made stock from the leg bones twice (once for human consumption and once for the dogs), and the wing meat ended up in a pot pie (and more dog stock). We got a lot of turkey meals out of that turkey so far and we still had a breast to get through... So I just wrapped it up and froze it. Mark was relieved that he wouldn't have to cook a big turkey after a long work week!
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| New crochet projects! |
All that was left was stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, yams, cranberry sauce, rolls, and green beans. And pie. And those are all easy! We collaborated on the yams (roasted in coconut oil) and the gravy needed some professional tweaking (a splash of vinegar to offset salt-I swear I didn't add
that much. My new Himalayan pink salt is tricky!). The kids helped make the cranberry sauce two days ago and Evie help me with the pumpkin pies. Everything except the stuffing was made from scratch! And a lot of the meal was grown/raised right here! Hooray for farms and gardens! I'm super inspired to expand the garden next year...
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| Lula's new Bumbo, "video game", and funny face. |
The second best tradition in our family is eating pumpkin pie for breakfast while Mark eats the leftovers from the kids' plates. The first best tradition is...
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| What's for dinner? |
...taking pictures of the current baby in the salad bowl!
Here is a link to earlier babies. And here is the baby that didn't get posted:
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| Daniel 2010 |
Why we didn't take more than one picture, I'll never know. Maybe the camera battery died. But that is the best I could come up with for Daniel!
Now on to the rest of Thanksgiving weekend...Mark woke me up at 7:30 to say, "You're not even out of bed and I've already made my first Black Friday purchase! A complete set of National Geographic on DVD-ROM for only $25! I couldn't resist!" How much more we will purchase today, we do not know. But on our list this year (possibly) is replacing the TV with one we old folks can actually see and a new video game system for the kids. MAYBE.
