5:46am. I jolt awake from a dream in which I am an uneasy accessory to attempted murder. Can I get back to sleep?
6:15am. Nope, I cannot get back to sleep. There are a lot of things to do. First up: coffee, Lauds, NYT puzzles. I don't see the Spelling Bee pangram but I need to get moving anyway.
7:15am. Sweet potatoes and beets go in the oven. Except -- wait -- I forgot to make a List. I am going to remember how to cook a big Thanksgiving dinner for company, right? I'm going to ease back into it, just like riding a bike or perhaps like childbirth? I microwave the pumpkin to make it easier to peel and put in my salad. This might have been a bad idea, because now I have very damp pumpkin. I marinate thin-sliced red onion in lemon juice for the salad. I start the bread dough and take the pastry out of the fridge. I definitely put too much water in that pastry yesterday.
7:40am. The Spelling Bee pangram plops obligingly into my brain. I write part of this post and wonder when I can reasonably wake people up to help cook. When does the turkey have to go in? I can't remember how to cook a turkey. I'm going to remember how to cook a turkey, right?
7:58am. I google "how to cook a turkey" and count backwards. Time to roll out some damp pastry.
8:40am. The pastry rolls out like a dream, but the pumpkin is definitely too wet. What kind of mutant pumpkin is this? Who told my squash it could be squashy?
9:05am. Everybody is awake except Alex, who was coding late into the night. He is sleeping in the room where we keep the batteries, and I need batteries for the kitchen scale so I can make the pecan pie. Should I wake up Alex? Should I wing the pecan pie measurements? I decide to wing the pecan pie measurements. I also discover that I have roasted salted pecans. Eek, they are so salty. Will it be weird if I bathe them to get the salt off? Is bathed-pecan pie a terrible idea? What if this entire meal is a regrettable aggregation of unsuccessful attempts at people's favorite foods? Or...wait...what if I pause and eat a little breakfast?
9:56am. Pies are in, starchy vegetables are all roasted, bread dough is rising, dishes are done. Time for breakfast + KenKens + another installment of this post. I feel some delegating coming on, my friends. I will take a shower while the kids chop and prep.
11:05am. The turkey goes in. The potatoes are peeled, ten pounds of them, and the celery and onion are chopped for the stuffing.
11:54am. It takes a long time to cube ten pounds of potatoes, but they are done. The Brussels sprouts are roasted and the salad greens are washed. The naked sweet potatoes and beets are awaiting their destinies. I am feeling a little wave of stress. Our guests might be here in half an hour and I am looking decidedly ulotrichous. (This is a word I learned on Tuesday, courtesy of the NYT cryptogram: having woolly or curly hair.) I am going to do battle with my hair so it is more curly and less woolly, and remove all the knitting bags and electronics from the living room, and assign someone to wipe down the downstairs bathroom, and ask Elwood to be the person in charge of beets.
12:30pm. Company arrives. It would have been better if the stuffing and sweet potatoes were already prepped, but I will get them ready now instead.
1:40pm. Marie is here!! She walks in from the train station wearing the giant purple shawl I made for her.
2:05pm. You guys, the turkey is doing something deeply weird. The meat thermometer is up in "probably dry and sad" territory, but there is a puddle of pink juice spilling out of the cavity. How can the top be dry and the juices be pink? Am I going to serve up turkey that is both dry and salmonella-laden? Also, I think I did forget how to host Thanksgiving. I still have to mash the potatoes? and make the gravy? and bake the rolls? and warm up the room-temperature things without drying them out? and share the oven with Joe so he can make a cranberry cake? St. Martha, I'm going to need some help here.
3:05pm. Dinner is served. I always think I don't love Thanksgiving food but I do actually enjoy Thanksgiving food. I know the stories say that the gods on Olympus ate ambrosia but I bet they had some gravy too. The turkey appears to be both cooked and moist. People I love are making happy noises as they eat food I cooked for them. This is one of my favorite things in the world.
4:30pm, maybe, but it's kind of a blur? Dessert! Pecan pie and pumpkin pie and cranberry cake, with plenty of whipped cream. The first dishwasher load gets going and we stash the turkey leftovers in the fridge.
5:15pm-ish. We play Telestrations, which continues to be one of my favorite ways to spend time with groups of 8 or 10 people. Joe is sitting next to me, and he asks me to draw an outhouse with a parking meter and to identify a post-COVID stock market drop. I do my best. I laugh until I cry.
6pm. We play charades. This is a Gladly family holiday tradition. It is, frankly, a little bonkers. I ask Elwood if he thinks TItus Andronicus will be too hard, and then Alex gets it in, like, 20 seconds. It takes us longer to figure out "The Quotations of Mao Zedong," but we get there in the end.
7:05pm. Our guests leave, and Elwood figures out how to fit all of the leftovers into a crowded fridge while I sit on the couch and blog. His task is made more difficult by the fact that I want to save everything. Yes, I want to eat the leftover salad tomorrow (greens with roasted squash, marinated red onions, and pecans -- so yummy and seasonally appropriate). Yes, I want to save the leftover whipped cream. It will go in my coffee tomorrow, naturally. Yes, I want to save all the gravy. ALL THE GRAVY.
7:53pm. I need to go and tackle the rest of the dishes.
7:54pm. Here I go. Tackling in 3-2-1...
8:44pm. That was a lot of dishes. I feel like my batteries are running down as I lurch back to the couch in slow motion. What are the things I want to do before I collapse in a puddle of drool? Finish this blog post, do a quick Duolingo story to keep the streak going, pray the rest of the rosary, brush teeth.
8:52pm. Probably there are some interesting things on Twitter? Maybe I should check, yeah?
8:54pm. I engage Grownup Mode and shut the Twitter tab. I hurl myself bedward.
Recent Comments