Happy Thanksgiving Dear Readers

This is NOT my table or my turkey.  We'll be roasting and eating just a turkey breast this year.  I won't be doing a whole bird and then taking the legs and thighs to work with me to "gift" to any eager employee wanting leftover food on Friday.  And they do want it.

I don't know what the large dish in the top left holds.  Seems like an enormous amount of mashed potato.  The photo is from Food52.

I have made three separate trips to the grocery store and still am missing parts of recipes.  I give up.
I'll make do or not make it at all.  Or make something entirely "new".

My friend and I are walking together at 11am.  I will bundle up and cover my mouth so I don't breathe in cold air.  I will have my inhaler.  I wish, on days like tomorrow, that we walked in an urban, city environment.  A park or block with a place to stop for a coffee or tea.  But we walk in a residential neighborhood and rarely see any other humans.  They drive.  We walk. We talk.

I may insert the sweet potatoes into the oven before the walk and remove them after the walk.  Peel, split, insert butter and brown sugar.  Then make green bean casserole.  Then roast two fat round acorn squash--candied with butter, maple syrup and sugar.  We like sugar and butter.  I enjoy all the chopping involved in making stuffing.  Onions, celery and parsley from the garden.  More butter.  Some eggs.  Mush it all together and press into another casserole dish.  I'll baste it with the stock I make for the gravy.  I bought two turkey thighs and will roast them with onions, carrots and a few cloves of garlic for the stock.  Then I'll peel and halve the Brussels sprouts and get them prepped for  a pan sautee.  I will also be making cranberry sauce.  With sugar, orange peel and brandy.  French brandy.  Lots of it. Hard to be reminded of any mistakes in the menu if the cranberries have enough  brandy in them.

I'm not making pie.  I will make the Pumpkin Whoopie pies on Friday.  I may regret not making pie. But if that's my only regret--so be it.  Daughter might bring a dessert "experiment" which sounds amazing doesn't it?  Then we'll play the annual Scrabble Game.  This is when I miss having my son with us.  The Scrabble Game.

Happy Thanksgiving to all.  It's a Holiday for you but for us...it's G's birthday.  He was born just in time for dinner on Thanksgiving Day.