Thanksgiving 2011

Wednesday was cool and wet.  I made a pot of chicken-with-wild-rice soup, and another, bigger pot of chili for supper.  We lit a fire in the fireplace and spent the pre-Thaksgiving evening watching the original Tron followed by Tron Legacy.

On Thursday got up bright and early to watch parades.  I made the various foods we were taking to Thanksgiving dinner over at Rick's aunt's house:

1. Roasted Green Beans -- snap stem end off of fresh green beans (we did about 4 pounds worth).  Dump them in a roasting pan, thrown in a bunch of chopped garlic, drizzle with olive oil; cook at 400F, stirring every 5 minutes.  When they look as done as you'd like, take them out.  We like them somewhat crunchy.  People tended to pick them up with their fingers and eat them like french fries.

2. Sauteed Collard Greens -- chop up some onion and slowly sautee in olive oil until tender and sweet.  Throw in chopped collards.  Cover pan to steam, utilizing water left clinging to leaves as well as some other water thrown in from the tea kettle (or whatever).  Cook until bright green.  Serve to crowd that doesn't usually eat collard greens and feels a bit adventurous putting it on their plates at Thanksgiving.

3. Celery stuffed with sunflower butter.  Self explanatory, right?  Very popular as something to nibble that wasn't sweet or otherwise junky. Also satisfied the sense of trying something new, since many of the crowd had never tried sunflower seed butter.

So, yeah, when I looked at the table I realized we were in charge of all of the green.

Anyway, we had a pleasant afternoon over there.  Much talking and laughter.

From there over to Rick's sister's house to see her new wooden floor.  This stop also featured pie and a viewing of A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.


Then home.  Although Rick was a bit regretful that we didn't have a longer drive home ... for years and years we spent the time after Thanksgiving stuffed in a car with all sorts of luggage, listening to Christmas CDs.  We considered maybe head over on the J.B. Bridge, then up north and come back into Missouri  at Chain of Rocks, then loop back down on 270, making laps around the county.  But, alas, we didn't have our Amy Grant Christmas CD with us (although David pointed out we could just download everything off of iTunes, it just didn't seem the same, you know?) so we came straight home.

And I spent the night having some sort of weird reaction to something I ate.  I finally got up at about 4am and sat reading a book in the family room.

Today was nice out (as was yesterday) so it was a great day for raking.  Not that I wanted to rake -- really, I wanted to sew -- but the last big drop of leaves is now up off of the yard, as are several hundred more of the Sweet Gum Balls.

We've spent some time organizing the Christmas lights, but don't have them up yet.  Tomorrow is supposed to be rainy, so who knows what we'll get up when.