Words Like Locusts Flew From Her Fingers

Happy Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is a weird holiday for us. I’m programmed to cook this enormous meal — most of it totally “from scratch”, because that’s just the sort of gal I am — and, within a half an hour, we eat whatever we’re going to eat and it’s over. Hours and hours of work, for what? It’s just the two of us. I don’t know why I bother. Like I said: I’m programmed.

Here’s what we had:

Pumpkin pie, made from real pumpkins that I’d been keeping out on the front steps since Halloween. I got the smaller pumpkins that are supposed to be better for cooking but, I have to admit, butternut squash makes a better pie. More flavorful. I read somewhere that the canned pumpkin you buy at the grocery store is mostly butternut squash and not pumpkin at all. Anyway, I whacked open the pumpkins, cleaned out the goo, and saved the seeds for roasting. (I love roasted pumpkin seeds!) I’ve got a mess of pumpkin left over that I’ll probably use for muffins or something.

Cranberry sauce. I truly cannot comprehend why anyone would buy canned cranberries. It’s so easy to make it yourself! One cup of water and one cup of sugar, bring it to a boil. Add a bag of whole cranberries. Boil gently for 10 minutes. Done. Duh? Could it get simpler?

Veggie stuffing, which actually is a misnomer because mine doesn’t get “stuffed” into anything. I made it this time with onions, celery, carrots, toasted hazelnuts, veggie broth, pre-packaged bread cubes, “poultry seasoning”, salt and pepper. I’ve made it in the past with good quality bread that I’ve ripped up into chunks and it really is better with fresher bread. I just didn’t have any on hand this time.

Mashed potatoes. I’ve been making these with veggie broth lately instead of with milk and I think I really prefer them with the broth. They’re more flavorful — which is nice because I don’t put butter on them anymore.

Corn, the usual frozen stuff that I just nuked. It was surprisingly tough. (Hanover brand, white sweet corn.)

Baked sweet potatoes. Just a couple small whole sweet potatoes that I baked in the oven. I can’t stand sweet potatoes with all that sweet crap all over them. Blech.

Rolls. Just some whole grain rolls I bought and heated up in the oven.

Mushroom gravy, made from this mix I bought from the Dixie Diner. I just discovered these folks and this is the first of their products I’ve tried. It was pretty good! Even Mark liked it — and he doesn’t usually like vegetarian gravies.

Oh… and Mark insisted on having some dead bird, so he bought this really gross looking “turkey breast” thing and cooked it up and HA HA he hated it. Luckily, the cats seem to like it alright.

I think that was everything. A whole bunch of food, to be sure. And now it’s a whole bunch of left-overs in the refrigerator.

Sigh…

I think I’ll eat some pumpkin seeds.