Thanksgiving Update

Our first Thanksgiving at a new place was pretty good (there's always room for improvement). My parents were going to drive down for a short visit. However, we figured out that since we had no furniture in the house except for my work desk, 2 chairs, and our bed, it was probably not the best idea for them to visit us right now. Of course, both Mom and Dad protested and assured us that they would be quite comfortable sleeping on an inflatable mattress and eating while standing up. Only with great difficulty did I manage to pursuade them to not go through with this folly. We agreed that they'll drive down here sometime in December when we're going to be better prepared to entertain.

This change of plans happened at the last moment (the day before the Thanksgiving), after I bought all the food. Not like I bought a lot of it. After all, we are still living out of a tiny dorm-size fridge (the one for beer and soda). So, for example, I didn't get a whole turkey, substituting it for a small turkey breast instead. Nevertheless, I had a task of cooking all this food last Thursday. The menu called for all the traditional stuff:

- roast turkey breast with honey-mustard glaze
- celery and mushroom stuffing
- cranberry relish
- mashed potatoes
- baked herbed sweet potatoes
- sweet and spicy green beans with turkey bacon
- pistachio salad
- and 2 pies (store-bought)

Even though we stayed in bed until 10am and then spent some time going to the Blockbuster for some last-minute rentals, I still managed to finish all the cooking by about 3pm! By about 3:30pm my work desk was transformed into a dinner table. Yes, it was not very elegant, but as I mentioned, there's a lot of room for improvement. The important thing to know here is that everything was very tasty and we totally pigged out.

Our bellies after the meal looked something like this:









And afterwards, Chris got the fire going in our fireplace and we made ourselves comfortable on a couple of blankets in the living room (remember - no furniture yet) and watched some silly movies. All in all, it was a pretty darn great Thanksgiving and that's something to be really thankful for.