Thanksgiving morning. How did you spend it? Quietly maybe? Busy with herding kids or fixing foods?
I'm in the kitchen, ready and waiting for the arrival of Snowdrop, Sparrow and their parents.
Our breakfast is informal on this day. We come to the table, pick something to eat, carry it to the next room. The TV is on. Macy's Thanksgiving Parade. You're surprised? My girls have loved this bit of silly fun for a long, long time. Here's something I read in the NYTimes that feels right to me:
It is a hard rite to explain: To commemorate the multicultural harvest feast of 1621 at Plymouth Rock, about three million New Yorkers and visitors annually station themselves on freezing late-November streets to watch giant inflatable branded cartoon characters, all promoting a department store that filed for bankruptcy protection more than 25 years ago.
Black Friday sales, SantaCon and the New Year’s Eve ball drop in Times Square — are largely adult affairs, but the Thanksgiving parade belongs to the children.
So the TV is on and I forge ahead with the cooking. And that cooking forms the backbone of the day, first in lunch preparations (squash soup and grilled cheese sandwiches today), then dinner. And I have to say, age brings some bit of savvy to the process, because the goal was to have Thanksgiving dinner ready by 5:30 and I was off by only five minutes.
No more commentary. Here's our day, as told in photos:
(Sparrow tries squash soup. He's neutral about it. Sort of like Snowdrop.)
(Facetime with Primrose! We miss you guys!)
(I splayed the turkey again this year: you wiggle the drumsticks out of the sockets and press them down in the pan. It's the best way I know to get the breast and dark meat to be ready at the same time.)
(Cranberry/cherry pie. I did not bake it!)
(Sparrow is much more enthusiastic about whipped cream! So is his sister.)
Such a full and beautiful day! Looking out right now I catch a glimpse of the beaver moon behind a thin layer of misty cloud. It's shining brightly on us, on you too, I expect.
I hope your table had good foods on it today. I hope you had a peaceful and happy Thanksgiving.
I'm in the kitchen, ready and waiting for the arrival of Snowdrop, Sparrow and their parents.
Our breakfast is informal on this day. We come to the table, pick something to eat, carry it to the next room. The TV is on. Macy's Thanksgiving Parade. You're surprised? My girls have loved this bit of silly fun for a long, long time. Here's something I read in the NYTimes that feels right to me:
It is a hard rite to explain: To commemorate the multicultural harvest feast of 1621 at Plymouth Rock, about three million New Yorkers and visitors annually station themselves on freezing late-November streets to watch giant inflatable branded cartoon characters, all promoting a department store that filed for bankruptcy protection more than 25 years ago.
Black Friday sales, SantaCon and the New Year’s Eve ball drop in Times Square — are largely adult affairs, but the Thanksgiving parade belongs to the children.
So the TV is on and I forge ahead with the cooking. And that cooking forms the backbone of the day, first in lunch preparations (squash soup and grilled cheese sandwiches today), then dinner. And I have to say, age brings some bit of savvy to the process, because the goal was to have Thanksgiving dinner ready by 5:30 and I was off by only five minutes.
No more commentary. Here's our day, as told in photos:
(Sparrow tries squash soup. He's neutral about it. Sort of like Snowdrop.)
(Facetime with Primrose! We miss you guys!)
(I splayed the turkey again this year: you wiggle the drumsticks out of the sockets and press them down in the pan. It's the best way I know to get the breast and dark meat to be ready at the same time.)
(Cranberry/cherry pie. I did not bake it!)
(Sparrow is much more enthusiastic about whipped cream! So is his sister.)
Such a full and beautiful day! Looking out right now I catch a glimpse of the beaver moon behind a thin layer of misty cloud. It's shining brightly on us, on you too, I expect.
I hope your table had good foods on it today. I hope you had a peaceful and happy Thanksgiving.
