We had a great Thanksgiving. We decided to stay home and were happy that Chuck's parents came also. Miriam was thrilled that two of her grandparents came to visit, and took charge of Grandma the entire time they were here. Come on! Come on! Come on! she would say, and Grandma would follow. They played the harp. Grandma even sat behind the harp so Miriam could show her how it worked. They looked at the trampoline and Miriam demonstrated it, and looked at Miriam's many toys. They successfully completed the long alphabet train puzzle, which to Miriam's consternation kept coming apart on our bumpy carpet. Then we sat at our little table and were quite happy to try everything, although I don't think Miriam ate too much of her Thanksgiving dinner after stocking up on chips and crackers and dip ahead of time.
I tried out a bunch of new things. I made an apple pie from scratch. Shocking. It had three kinds of apples in it, which was fun, and the top crust sank down as the apples cooked and after I took it out of the oven, so the top was quite bumpy. I also tried making stuffing from scratch, with homemade cornbread. I love cornbread, so I wanted to try it, but it was hard for me to cut up cornbread and use it for something else instead of just eating it! But Wednesday night we had some of it for dinner, so I felt better. We used the rest for the stuffing and baked it that night and then reheated it Thursday. I had too much cornbread so I ended up with a 9x13 and a pieplate of stuffing! Way too much stuffing. We made sweet potatoes and mashed them and added buttermilk, which made it taste really good. We made the mashed potatoes the night before, and then put them in the crockpot the next day to heat up. That is a really great way to make mashed potatoes.
Then on Thursday I decided to make spinach dip and consulted the websites again. Allrecipes.com and Martha Stewart were helping me out. Martha Stewart kept crashing that day though, too many turkey emergencies. Do you know all the news shows were having Thanksgiving Day call centers for turkey dilemmas? Experts standing by to answer all your questions. But I finally found a recipe for artichoke and spinach dip and went to get the stuff for it. When I got back we made it (awesome) and of course the turkey was cooking the whole time! We were glad Grandma and Grandpa came because we definitely had enough and have been enjoying the leftovers, but today Chuck said, "You know what I don't want for dinner?" I said, "Turkey?" Yes. So we had chili dogs, which Miriam thought was great.
Chuck got to cook a bunch of turkeys this week for the youth's project. They took thanksgiving dinners to families at church, and Chuck and a couple of the other men smoked the turkeys for them. Our yard and fridge smelled like smoked turkey from Tuesday to Thursday. We also cooked a few for our friends. I don't know how Risa could take all the good smells in her yard. On Tuesday I brought in a couple turkeys from the smoker, and Miriam said, "Ah! Ah!" pointing to her mouth very authoritatively, but I had to tell her that they weren't for us, and also that she should say "Eee! Eee!" instead. She did, but she still had to wait until Thursday.
We are grateful for our family, including all the aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents, and are thrilled that Miriam will finally be legally adopted this month! Details to follow.
13 years ago
