a memorable thanksgiving...

today's blog is dedicated to larry and tracie swanson. they were our first "couple" friends and have the dubious distinction of being the guests at our first thanksgiving meal. just so you know, they are still alive...

so today . . . is thanksgiving eve. and i think the time has come to tell you about the first time i cooked thanksgiving dinner. all. by. myself...

when rollie and i got married, we were really young--probably too young to be making such huge life decisions. i had very little real life experience. i went from living with my mom and dad, to living in a dorm room, to living with rollie. and while i knew how to dust and vacuum and clean the bathroom (thank you for making me do chores, mom!) i didn't really know how to cook. when i lived at home, my dad always made oatmeal for our breakfast (sometimes chocolate oatmeal! thank you dad!) we all ate hot lunch at our respective schools, and my mom cooked dinner. and then i went away to college and discovered the joys of saga food services! choices, choices, choices, and none of them required me to get near a stove!! so basically, rollie married someone who could bake chocolate chip cookies and zucchini bread...

but when our first thanksgiving rolled around, i decided i wanted to cook a big thanksgiving dinner. mostly i decided this because our thanksgiving vacation was only four days long which really didn't leave us enough time to go home for thanksgiving. so even though my foray into providing meals for our new family had pretty much consisted of kraft macaroni and cheese and hamburger helpers, i was prepared to do whatever i had to do to make our first thanksgiving memorable...

... and it was. but not for the reasons you might think...

it started right after halloween. i got out the cookbooks people had thoughtfully given us for wedding gifts and started planning. i made a menu. i made a grocery list. i made a timeline. because as anyone who has ever cooked a thanksgiving dinner knows, you need a timeline. thanksgiving dinner does not just happen, people--it takes planning! i'm not so sure i realized this before... it seemed like all my previous thanksgiving dinners had just sort of appeared. i guess that's what happens when you aren't the grownup responsible for feeding the hungry hoard of family members. but this year, it was all up to me.

we were on an extremely tight budget when we were first married. extremely tight. i'm pretty sure that is why we ate so much kraft macaroni and cheese, because i could buy four boxes for a dollar. so going to the grocery store and buying whatever i needed all in one week was not an option. i had to divide the list so i could buy the non-perishable items early and watch for the best deal on a frozen turkey. it became clear to me, as i pushed my shopping cart up and down the grocery store aisles, that i was not going to be able to afford everything on my list. i was going to have to make choices...

but this was our first thanksgiving! i wanted it to be memorable! so i started looking for cheaper alternatives. as i was comparing prices, the first thing i noticed was that those bags of dried bread cubes that the stuffing recipe called for were kind of expensive. but i needed dried bread cubes if i was going to make stuffing. but i couldn't afford the dried bread cubes. so i decided to make my own. bread was cheap. i figured i could buy a couple of loaves of bread, cut the slices up into cubes, dry them, and ta-da! i would have bread cubes for my stuffing.

and that is exactly what i did. it took me one whole afternoon, but i cut up three loaves of bread (because i wanted to make sure i had enough) into tiny, half inch cubes. then i spread them out on every cookie sheet i had. i discovered that i didn't have enough cookie sheets, so i put aluminum foil on every horizontal surface i could find and covered it with soft bread cubes. and then i waited for them to dry...

i did all of this several days before thanksgiving, because i had no idea how long it was going to take bread cubes to dry. and i figured that once they were dry i could bag them up and save them until the big day. plus, i knew it was going to be a lot of work to cook thanksgiving dinner, and this was one thing i could do early...

and then there was the turkey. i was used to buying meat one pound of hamburger at a time--which i would then divide into thirds and use when making hamburger helper (i told you, our budget was TIGHT!) but i had decided we needed at least a 20 pound turkey! (yes, i know there were only two of us, but the bigger the bird, the more meat. right?) thankfully(?) our freezer was nearly empty. so once i found a grocery store where i could buy a turkey for about 10 cents a pound (if i bought $25 worth of other groceries, which is about all i had,) i rooted around in the frozen turkey bin until i found the biggest turkey they had--a 23 pound bird! i put that thing in my cart, feeling like i had hit the jackpot, and headed home to try to cram it into my freezer.

a 23 pound turkey is pretty big. especially when you live in a basement apartment and your refrigerator has a small freezer...

i finally got the bird tucked away, lined up the rest of my cans and boxes of food, smiled at my drying bread cubes, and waited for thanksgiving...

i say waited, but i was busy! i was still going to classes, doing homework, trying to figure out what i could make for dinner each night with a can of tuna fish, and turning my bread cubes over so that they would dry evenly and quickly.

the weekend before thanksgiving i was talking to my mom on the phone, and i was telling her about my plans for our thanksgiving meal. my biggest worry was how i was going to get everything ready to eat at the same time! i had quite a menu planned and only one oven, which i was pretty sure was going to be filled up with turkey. "well," my mom said, "whatever you do, don't make your own stuffing! just use the stove top stuffing."

just use the stove top stuffing? what was stove top stuffing, and why didn't i know about it?!?! i didn't know about it, because i was never in the kitchen when the actual cooking was happening. "you know, stove top stuffing," my mom continued. "you buy it in a box at the grocery store. then you just boil water, empty the package into the boiling water, cover it and wait a few minutes, and you have stuffing!"

this would have been good to know. it would have been especially good to know before i had spent the last several days cubing bread slices and babysitting them so that they would dry evenly. i looked around my kitchen at my 5, 386 nearly dry bread cubes and said, "i think it might be too late for stove top stuffing..." i quickly recovered. "besides," i continued, "i want to make real stuffing, the kind that goes inside the turkey. this is our first thanksgiving, and i want it to be memorable."

there was that word again...

when i finished up my classes on the day before thanksgiving, i decided i should get out my menu for the next day and get organized. and, i thought, it was probably time to take the turkey out of the freezer so it could thaw...

yep, my 23 pound turkey was still in the freezer, frozen as solid as a rock! blissfully ignorant, i took it out of the freezer and plopped in into the kitchen sink to thaw. hmmm, i thought, i should probably get out the cookbook and find out how long it was going to take to cook the turkey. we had invited company over for thanksgiving dinner, and i wanted to make sure everything was done at the same time. i flipped through the cookbook, and that's when i saw it. that's when i saw how long it takes to thaw a 23 pound frozen turkey!

we were in biiiig trouble!

i spent the rest of the afternoon and evening thawing that big hunk of meat! that turkey had more warm baths than a messy toddler! i dunked it in warm water. i ran water inside it. and that's when i found the bag of giblets. "what's this?" i said to rollie. (it should be noted here that rollie knew exactly what it was, while i didn't have a clue. in hindsight, perhaps he should have been the one cooking thanksgiving dinner...) he removed the bag of giblets, (because there was no way i was touching that!) and i continued pouring water inside the thawing turkey. finally, around midnight, i decided the bird was thawed enough, because i needed to go to bed! i had a lot of cooking to do the next day, and according the the cookbook, a 23 pound stuffed turkey was going to take several hours to cook, which meant i was going to have to get up about 4 a.m.

i felt like overall, things were progressing nicely. my jello salad was made. the bread cubes were hard as rocks (which i hoped was a good thing!) i had a bag of frozen corn and a bag of frozen peas ready to be microwaved. my pumpkin and peach pies were done (i told you i could bake--it's cooking that gives me grief!) and delicious squishy dinner rolls were ready to be warmed and served. i was pretty sure the only thing that had the potential to ruin my memorable first thanksgiving was that turkey...

i got up at 4 a.m. so did rollie. actually, rollie is probably the one who woke up first and had to drag me into the kitchen. i pulled out the biggest bowl i had and mixed up the stuffing. (it may surprise you to learn that i had waaaay more dried bread cubes than i needed. clearly i did not have an accurate picture of the size of the inside of a turkey... even a 23 pound turkey.) when i got out the roasting pan and the brown-in bag, i saw that there were instructions with the brown-in bag... and those instructions said that if i cooked my stuffed turkey in the brown-in bag, it would only take 4-5 hours...

did i mention it was 4 a.m.?

our company wasn't coming until early afternoon, so i put the stupid turkey in the stupid brown-in bag, put the whole stupid thing back in the stupid refrigerator and went back to bed...

around noon, it looked like things were finally coming together. the turkey was smelling really good. i had disposed of the extra bread cubes. the table was set. it was time to make the sweet potato balls.

sweet potato balls are a family tradition. we had had sweet potato balls at every thanksgiving i could remember, although again, i had never actually been involved in making them. but how hard could it be? take a big marshmallow, cover it with mashed up canned sweet potatoes, roll the ball in crushed corn flakes, and bake! time was getting short, so rollie was helping me. "what are these?" he asked. "sweet potato balls! we have them every year at thanksgiving!" "are they good?" he asked. "i guess so," i answered. "i don't like sweet potatoes, so i never eat them." "then why are we having them if you don't like them?" he asked.

he sure was asking a lot of questions!

"because," i explained, "it's thanksgiving, and we always have them at thanksgiving. don't you like them?" "well," he said, "i don't know. i don't really like sweet potatoes either..." so there we were, our hands covered in sweet potato goo and crushed cornflakes, making something that neither one of us liked. "maybe larry or tracie will like them," i said. "let's hope so," rollie replied...

we took the turkey out of the oven and reset it for the sweet potato balls. we carefully cut the brown-in bag off, and i started to scoop out the stuffing. it was looking pretty good! and it smelled delicious!! maybe i was going to be able to pull off this thanksgiving dinner thing after all. rollie started slicing up the turkey while i finished up the other food.'

"uh, julie?" he said. "yes?" i answered. and then he said, "i think there is something wrong with the turkey."

these are not the words you want to hear on thanksgiving, especially when you have company arriving at any minute. these are not the words you want to hear on thanksgiving when you have pretty much spent your whole grocery budget on this one meal, hoping to live on the leftovers for a while. these are not the words you want to hear on your first thanksgiving, when all you wanted was for it to be memorable.

i was afraid to look. rollie kept poking around, and then he reached down into the bird and held something up. "what is that?!?!?!" i asked, horrified, looking at the brown, drippy mass in his hand. he said, "i think it is more of the giblet stuff..."

who knew that a turkey had TWO secret compartments where giblet stuff could be hidden...

i learned a lot our first thanksgiving. i learned that thanksgiving dinner isn't just a meal, it is a week long ordeal. i learned that if you have to get up at 4 a.m. it is easier if someone else gets up with you. i learned that you don't have to cook the same amount of food to feed four people that your mother cooked to fed thirty or forty!

and i learned that the most memorable things are sometimes the ones that don't go exactly according to plan...

oh, and when cooking a turkey, look out! there are giblets in both ends!!

i think we may have walked a marathon...

so today . . . we walked.

we walked and we walked and we walked. we ate our thanksgiving meal. and then we walked and walked and walked some more.

the reason we are in las vegas is to scope out wedding venues for diandra's wedding this spring. this seemed like a good time to come, since we would have three days free, and none of us would have to take any time off from work.

apparently half a million other people thought it would also be a good time to visit las vagas...

there are a lot of people here. a lot! but i digress...

my plan was to do the wedding stuff today, while rollie camped out in our room and watched football. then i thought we could do fun stuff tomorrow before leaving to go home on saturday. but my plan was thwarted when the venues we wanted to check out were mostly closed today. this is vegas baby! i thought everything was open all the time! i was wrong again.

so instead we walked up and down the strip--twice--and around and around and around in the hotel shops. we stopped to sit--twice just to rest and twice to eat. and that is all. you cannot even imagine how our feet and legs feel now that we are back "home" on our cushy beds. i fully expect to wake up screaming in the night from muscle cramps. doesn't that sound like fun???

i should clarify that diandra and i did most of the walking. oddly, rollie was not interested in walking and walking and walking. which is probably just as well. because when he walks with us in crowds of people, he can't help but do his secret service routine--stand tall, eyes moving above everyone else, slowly, side to side, anticipating trouble. (i personally think he is secretly hoping for trouble so he can go into his black belt ninja stuff. he says that is not true--he just wants to be prepared, you know, just in case. but i still think he is always hoping his black belt ninja stuff will one day come in handy...)

we started out this morning (and i use that term loosely,) headed for the bellagio. it is thanksgiving, and my friend wendy said we HAD to eat at the bellagio buffet. so that was our plan. diandra and i took the circuitous route through the caesar's palace shops while rollie took the direct route. he arrived first even though he left a couple of hours after we did. he texted us (thank goodness for cell phones!) and said there was a line. he was not exaggerating. there was a LINE! a line that zigzagged like toy story 3 at disneyland, and then went around a corner. i think it would have taken us the rest of the day to get in there. i like to eat, but standing in line for hours and hours was just not my idea of fun for today. so we got out of line and went on a search for food that could be immediately ours! we tried outback steak house, but we were too early. i was ready to settle for mcdonald's. really! i mean, it wouldn't be the first time we had eaten fast food on thanksgiving day... but we settled on panda express and pizza. i knew it was meant to be, when a table opened up right in front of us!

after lunch we decided it was time for coats. did i mention that it is coooold here? it wasn't too bad earlier in the day when the sun was shining on us. but by the middle of the afternoon, we either had to get our coats or turn into human popsicles. and that is when i made a terrible error in judgement--i decided i wanted to walk all the way to the end of the strip to the excaliber hotel. diandra reluctantly went with me. it got colder. it got dark. we went up long flights of stairs to cross walkways across the busy streets. we took a few more pictures. and finally we arrived!the colored turrets were beautiful. the hotel? not so much. it wasn't exactly what i expected. at all. and now, we had to walk all the way back. and it was colder. and darker. but we huddled together and just kept walking. and walking. and walking.

we were going to go shopping in the morning before doing the wedding stuff (which is why we came here in the first place--but it is easy to forget that when we are busy having so much fun!) it is black friday, and we ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS go shopping early in the morning on black friday.

but not this year. this year we are sort of exhausted. and sore! we are thinking of spending black friday on the internet. and we still have to get the wedding stuff done...

...because i am not sure i have the energy for another weekend in vegas!

at least, not until after christmas ;)

thanksgiving

so today . . . between eating bar-be-que chips and molasses cookies, i've been thinking about being thankful. i was going to post a top ten list of things that make me thankful. that was my plan. but sometimes my blogs don't go according to my plan. sometimes i sit down and write so today . . . and something totally different comes out. that's what happened today.

lately, i've been having a tough time. i've been sick. work has been frustrating. my band has been in turmoil. my stuff is disorganized. i feel gloomy. and yet, even with all that, my life is so much better than many others. this fact has smacked me in the face more than once lately.

our church has a food bank. it started out pretty small and mostly helped people in our congregation for whom money was tight. and then it grew. now on any given sunday, food is given out to probably 50-60 people--many of whom are homeless. and lately, some of those homeless people have started coming to church and attending small group bible studies. it is really cool to see the more affluent members of our church having real conversations with people who live in the park or under the freeway overpass.

this has made me very aware of how much i have. a few weeks ago i met richard. he had just been to the food bank, and in addition to his two bags of food, he was also given a blanket. he was so excited--because even though it is still nearly 80 degrees in the daytime, it gets cold at night. he couldn't wait to show me his new blanket, and tell me how much he appreciated getting it! last week i had a conversation with richard on my way out of the parking lot. i was driving my cute car and the top was down, because it was a nice day. as i approached him, i slowed down, took off my sunglasses so he could see it was me, and said hi. i felt somewhat conspicuous in my car, but i didn't want to just drive by and act like i hadn't seen him. when i waved, he smiled, said hi, and then added, "nice car!" so we talked about it for a while, and then i went off to lunch. i left richard waiting in the shade of a tree, with his bicycle, for his turn to go into the food bank.

i have so much, and yet there are always things that call to me from the other side of the cash register. and it is ok to buy something new--even if i don't necessarily need it. (which is good, because my plan for tomorrow is shopping.) but in the midst of it all, i want to remember to be thankful--not only for all the things that i already have, but also for that frustrating job that provides me with income, for a body that is healthy enough to work (even when it isn't completely well,) for a church that lets me "rock out" during worship on sunday mornings and makes homeless people feel like they belong, for friends who read my blog for a laugh but "feel my pain" when life isn't funny, and for a family who loves me whether i cook a thanksgiving turkey or not.

twas the night before thanksgiving

so today . . . i went to the grocery store in preparation for thanksgiving day.

yes, i know thanksgiving is tomorrow. and yes, i also know that there is no way a frozen turkey of any size will thaw in time to be cooked for dinner tomorrow. but that is ok, because we aren't having turkey for thanksgiving dinner. i'm not quite sure what we are going to have . . .

. . . because i'm not cooking. usually i do. while i don't cook a lot in my normal life, thanksgiving dinner is the exception. traditionally my mom and dad have come to our house for the long weekend, but now that we live 1000 miles away, it is a pretty long drive for a four day weekend.

and so now our thanksgivings are not always the traditional kind.

the first time i broke tradition was a few years ago when rollie and diandra were out of town. i had to fend off several dinner invitations from people who were horrified that i would be alone, but i was kind of excited about it. the night before thanksgiving, i went to the grocery store and picked out the foods that sounded good to me, because i certainly was not going to cook a huge dinner just for myself! and then i spent thanksgiving day in front of the tv watching christmas movies. my holiday dinner consisted of canned chili with fritos and shredded cheese, and a box of ding dongs for dessert. i made my christmas list from the ads, and went shopping ridiculously early on black friday. by myself. (i couldn't quite break all the traditions . . . )

that was the year i realized that the earth wouldn't stop spinning if i didn't bake a turkey on the fourth thursday of november.

then there was our first diandra-less holiday. technically i guess it was my second diandra-less holiday, but it was the first one rollie and i had shared. so we decided we would make a new tradition. we realized diandra was all grown up now, and there might be years when she wouldn't be with us at thanksgiving, so we needed a plan. my plan was that i wouldn't cook and clean up all that food for just the two of us. we decided our new plan would be to eat out for thanksgiving dinner. at about 2:00 we got in the car and headed to sizzler. it was closed. ok, maybe olive garden. it was closed. i was worried that i was beginning to see a pattern here. red lobster was closed. the outback steak house was closed. black angus was open, but booked solid with reservations.

reservations. that would have been a good idea . . .

we drove on. hometown buffet was closed. subway was closed. (you can see our standards lowered in direct proportion to our hunger.) burger king was closed. i was beginning to think we were going to have a repeat of the canned chili with fritos dinner--only i didn't have any fritos or ding dongs, and the grocery stores were closed too. i did have tuna fish. and bread . . .

and then we saw it . . . a place to eat with the lights on! we eagerly turned into the empty parking lot, and went inside and placed our order. as we sat at the table eating our sourdough jacks (yes people, we were at jack in the box!) i couldn't help but smile. were we rebels or what!

this year is going to be another tradition-breaking thanksgiving. i've been sick, and while i usually kind of enjoy cooking on thanksgiving, this year it just isn't going to happen. my plan was to call around and see what restaurants were going to be open, and possibly make a reservation. but that didn't happen either. so we have a new plan for thanksgiving this year. it is called eating snack food all day long and then driving around to see if we can find a place to eat dinner (knowing we can always end up at jack in the box.) that is why i had to go to the store tonight, because we don't really keep snack food in the house any more--except for nuts.

i went to the grocery store with a list in my head--chips for me, cookies and crackers for diandra, apples and bananas for rollie (although that doesn't really enter into the spirit of snack food, since it is good for you--so i bought him cookies too,) and soda pop for all. lest you think that is all we will eat, i also bought lettuce in case we had a craving for salad (uh huh--that's going to happen) and yogurt.

the grocery store on the night before thanksgiving is a surprisingly busy place. i noticed three kinds of people there--the "on a mission" people who are racing madly around the store, tossing items into their cart, because they have to get home and bake pumpkin pies and make jello salads, and figure out how to thaw a 25 pound turkey in time to bake it in 12 hours. then there are the "shell-shocked" ones who wander aimlessly through the aisles unable to put anything in their carts. they don't know what they need or where to find it. they have 15 people coming to their house for dinner the next day, and they have no idea what to serve. except for turkey, which they don't know they have to thaw first . . . and then there are the "whatever" people, who know that tomorrow is thanksgiving, but dinner is NOT at their house. they just have to bring the soda or rolls or whipped cream for the pie that someone else will bake.

and then there was me, buying snack food--no turkey, no pumpkin pie, no vegetables or rolls. people were probably thinking, "does she even know what tomorrow is?!?!?!"

but that's ok, because i do know what tomorrow is. and it isn't about the food. really. it is thanksgiving--a day to be thankful for all the wonderful things we have in our lives--even if a home-cooked turkey dinner isn't one of them.