Thanksgiving in 2 Acts

Act 1: Thanksgiving Day

It's been years since my family had a traditional Thanksgiving (at least partially due to my becoming a vegetarian as a teenager) and we decided that this wasn't the year to break our tradition of being untraditional. So, on Thanksgiving Day, my sister, my mom, and I gathered to bake Christmas cookies and candies. We had a chance for extra celebration because my sister got engaged the day before! Ahhh, my baby sister is getting married! I'm so excited and happy for her and incredibly impressed because her fiance picked out the ring all by himself and did a wonderful job. (Congratulations, Sis!) We celebrated with Champagne...at 10:00 in the morning. It made for some interesting cookies...

When the 3 of us come together to bake, it's guaranteed to end up with a huge mess in the kitchen. By the time the first cookies came out of the oven, it looked like a bag of flour had exploded. But, we persevered through the flour-choked air and ended up with gingersnaps, candy-cane cookies, peanut butter bon-bons, peanut brittle, and a pumpkin cake. Everything was delicious, although the candy-cane cookies didn't turn out very aesthetically pleasing. (I'd chalk it up to the champagne, but I've never been able to make pretty candy-cane cookies. My grandmother can make them perfectly, but it seems I didn't inherit that gene.) My sister, Jackie, decided it was easier to make huge candy-canes (see picture) and I finally decided it was easier to make sticks instead of canes. It doesn't really matter because pretty or ugly, they all taste the same, but no one ever believes that when they peruse the cookie offerings.

Between the champagne and the general holiday cheer, we had a pleasant, giggle-filled day.

Act 2: Saturday

On Saturday, we hosted a Thanksgiving dinner for nine people. I convinced Mom that we needed the following to insure there was enough food for everyone: pot roast, wild rice and mushroom soup, dressing, green bean casserole, squash casserole, mashed potatoes & gravy, corn, cranberry sauce, pineapple-lemon salad, 2 pies, pumpkin cake, and cookies. It was so much fun cooking all morning and trying to figure out how to time everything so it was ready at the same time. Luckily, a lot of the food could be prepared ahead of time and stuck in the oven to finish. Needless to say, we had a lot of leftovers, even after sending some home with everyone! My sister's fiance, Eric, was there and we all got to know him better and welcomed him to the family by letting him mash the potatoes. He did a good job; we're considering assigning it as his permanent holiday job. (Welcome to the family, Eric!)

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