Ah, thanksgiving was a success! The menu consisted of: turkey (of course), mashed potatos, baked yams with marshmellow creme, cornbread stuffing, green bean casserole, glazed carrots, cranberry sauce, gravy, challah bread, pumpkin pie, sweet potato pie, double chocolate brownie and whipped cream. There was enough leftovers to have a complete second meal the next night and a few odd leftovers the following day. The timing wasn't perfect for cooking the meal, but it wasn't that far off either. I suspect this will improve with practice. I have discovered to my dismay that I'm allergic to red wine and will not be drinking it in the future. (It makes my jaws tingle and ache and gives me an overall feeling of unwellness. Not good ... but white wines are still okay.)
Best of all was spending the day with loved friends. Next year we hope to have even more loved ones share the day with us. But this will entail more future planning than what we did this year. (I ended up grocery shopping the day before!)
The kitchen is finally cleaned up .. thank goodness. But the glow of the holiday weekend faded abruptly last evening when I received a distressing phone call. It turns out that my stepdad has cancer and was given only 4 to 5 months to live. Apparently he had surgery last Monday to remove his colon and part of his stomach. That's not good and I'm very sad. (I wonder if that's why he's been on my mind the last week or so.) After all, this man raised me from the time I was a one-year old until I graduated high school and left home at the age of eighteen. I'm going down to southern California to pay my respects to him while he's still around. Hopefully he'll prove the doctors wrong, but I suspect that he's not been the same strong man that he was before my brother was killed almost eight years ago. I think that it's true what they say about the body being more susceptible to disease when the heart's sad.
