Happiness is Turkey Recipes

~ Jenny

I’m not a fan of turkey in general, but once a year here in America it’s everywhere. Christmas has a variety of food traditions but for Thanksgiving, it’s turkey and dressing, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie. It’s the law, unwritten but still firm. So every year about this time, our media is full of a thousand ways to cook a turkey, a thousand things to do with leftover turkey, a thousand videos of exploding deep fried turkeys setting garages on fire, not to mention the President pardoning a turkey, although who knows how that’s going to go this year, he’ll probably fire it. It’s our solstice, or at least our prelude to the solstice that’s going to show up three weeks later with the longest night of the year, followed by the most obnoxious holiday of the year, followed by a new year that’s bound to be better than the last because dear God . . . It’s the cycle, I’m talking about. Which is why I read all the turkey recipes with joy even if I’ll never make another one–there are other ways to make gravy which is what this is all about for me–because it means that last cycle to a new and better time is starting.

So all the turkey news makes me happy. What made you happy this week?

67 thoughts on “Happiness is Turkey Recipes”

    3. Pardoning turkeys used to make me think of The West Wing. Now it makes me think of the Great Turkey Debacle in Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston. It never fails to make me laugh!

  2. Definitely feeling like this year coming close to an end makes me feel happy. I’m not engrossed in turkey recipes, but cookie recipes. When the first chilly, drizzly days of fall start, the cookie urge hits hard. I already warned my number one cookie elf (aka younger son) that we were going to take it easy on cookies this year. I mostly make them to give away and I don’t think most people want food from an acquaintance’s kitchen this year. But I can still look and I did tell him we could make gingersnaps this weekend. They are everybody’s favorite and I only make them this time of year. (So they stay special :-)).

    1. Today is my very close friend’s birthday and because his favorite cake requires fresh blueberries, we celebrate it during blueberry season. But the last few years I’ve felt guilty about not marking the actual day and bullied him into accepting cookies for his birthday. This year I baked 2 kinds because I know he doesn’t share his cake with his employees (well, there are 10 of them) and this way he has some to take home to his partner (maybe) and there will be a separate bag for each of his stores. The only trouble is that I love both of the varieties I baked and have been snacking on them steadily since I pulled them out of the oven.

      Someone once suggested that I bake cookies that I don’t particularly crave to give to other people, but I’ve never seen the point in that. “Here, let me give you something I don’t particularly like as a token of my affection.”
      Not from my oven!!!

  3. I shouldn’t admit this — but you guys won’t tell. I’m incredibly relieved to have a Thanksgiving without a large family gathering. From childhood on I have found holidays nervewracking because there was so much tension. (It’s funny-strange to talk with cousins who enjoyed seeing everyone at Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter. I managed to avoid one by claiming illness — at that Christmas party my step-father keeled over with a massive heart attack, dying instantly.)

    So, I picked up my daughter and her cat yesterday from the next state over; they’re going to stay through New Year’s (she was tested for COVID and filled out the online paperwork required by my state). At most one of her friends might come for a night at Thanksgiving and again at Christmas. I would love to have my son and daughter-in-law around for Christmas, but they live in Europe so can’t visit the US this year. Other than missing them, I’m content.

    1. Seconded. 100%. No need for excuses or guilt, we aren’t gathering with everyone and I’m excited.

      1. Oh you have no idea how much I agree with this one!!! I mean, I’m sorry for those who *want* to get together and can’t, but for those of us that don’t…

  4. I’d be curious to know if family-dinner-based holidays in other countries are similar to Thanksgiving in the U.S.

    My experience was always sort of “oh…THIS again.”

    It’s hard for me to imagine, but if I think of it as a book (which I can enter with no problems), I can envision a reunion where every member is happy to see every other member, and feels enveloped in a warm loving atmosphere where all the people know each other very well and appreciate the core of who each other person really is.

    But I’ve never personally experienced that. Instead, it’s always been a situation where the food traditions make the meal pretty much a timed performance, with certain people the actors/Director and the rest an audience.

    The director feels both judged and judgmental; the audience members have food preferences and dislikes that don’t always match the meal; the timing is complex; the theater is inadequately/excessively/uncomfortably prepared for larger groups than usual, and the ones who host don’t fully appreciate the fatigue and jangled nerves of those who travel, while the ones who just arrive to be fed have no real idea of the time and expense and effort expended by those who cook and houseclean ahead of the meal.

    Plus I really don’t like turkey. Or pumpkin pie. Or cranberry sauce. I’d trade it all for the gravy, at least since I discovered the amazing effects that the herb Lovage has on gravies. Mmmm….. gravy.

    1. Very well put!!
      Here over the pond we don’t gave Thanksgiving, only Erntedankfest whicv is a church feast and rarely celebrated outside church.
      However, we do have Christmas as *the* big family event. I loved it as a child – very low-key in my family since my parents’ siblings live too far away. I came to not like it after we had formed a family ourselves.
      With my parents it’s still low-key and nice. With the in-laws it developped into the obligatory family visit, which is a pity for hubby’s parents who are okay.
      The cliche about Germans is rather true though: we don’t pretend much/are honest. If we don’t like each other, we don’t like each other. You cannot force people to love each other, no matter if they are siblings or not.
      So jinx’s ideal of a small Thanksgiving would be my dream for xmas, too.

    2. Again, seconded, 100%. Holidays slowly morphed from something joyous into something not, and I’ve been dreading them for years. Staged dinners sounds perfectly accurate.

      1. I’m starting to feel a theme in my replies on this thread…

        Absolutely, jinx, absolutely.

        I loved Christmas as a child (it was just me and my parents, usually), but as an adult the joy has slowly but surely been sucked out of it.

        Does anybody actually live the ‘movie-style’ Christmas celebration and happiness depicted onscreen and (supposedly) aspired to by all?

          1. We might be the odd family out, then. In the last years since our kids moved out and would only return for the holidays, we had great get-togethers with lots of fun (and serious discussions now and then, too), everybody took turns cooking and cleaning, and everything was very relaxed. It breaks my heart to imagine it might not be possible this year as it’s difficult to find room for 8 or 9 people where we usually only have two, considering Corona suggestions … we’ll hope and see.

        2. I did, growing up. My father’s family (my mother’s family were 600 miles away) all gathered for Thanksgiving and Christmas and enjoyed each other very much, and everybody cooked, and because of various dietary requirements there were always five kinds of dressing and three kinds of pie. As they got older and died off it got smaller, and eventually it was just my parents and me, which was just as well because by that time I was working holidays as I have been for the last twenty-seven years, and we just celebrated when I could be there. Now that my closest friends live some distance away we don’t have that kind of celebration but we usually get together near the time of the holiday (and our birthdays) and because I love turkey (was allergic to chicken for thirty years) I nearly always have some around and can put together something like a Thanksgiving dinner on short notice.
          I think the foundation of the relaxed attitude they all had was that my grandparents’ families were so large that they sat down twenty to dinner nearly every day unless there were no visitors, so it was no big deal.

          1. We did and do. Everyone helps cooking and cleaning and we always have a great time. Even as child, always a great time, lots of cousins, aunts and uncles. As we got older we pitched in cleaning up and lots of washing dishes. And eating the sweets. The adults still sitting around the table talking and laughing and reminiscing.

            Occasionally one sister would start an argument but mom would put a stop to it immediately.

    3. ” I can envision a reunion where every member is happy to see every other member, and feels enveloped in a warm loving atmosphere where all the people know each other very well and appreciate the core of who each other person really is.”

      I hear ya. I’ve never felt very simpatico with most of my relatives (definitely not the ones that live in my state) and mostly I just sat in the corner with my knitting and got ignored every year. Last year my mom, her boyfriend, his son and his son’s friend and I went to an extremely fancy buffet and it was awesome….sigh.

      I feel like my whole life everybody tells me that family is supposed to make you feel snugged and cuddled and safe and loved, and that just has not been my experience. They’re longtime strangers at best.

  5. Canadian Thanksgiving is in early October so even though I like turkey, it’s no on the menu for November. We had a very usual run of warm weather and the dog and I went for lots of long walks – any excuse to be outside. Freezing rain in the forecast today which is much more typical for this time of year. Good day for homework and checking out online craft shows for Christmas gifts.

    I had 2 cubic yards of compost delivered on Friday and DS lugged it into my neighbour’s yard onto my new garden bed. DH helped me spread our newly mulched leaf compost and voila – garden’s all ready for winter. I measured out the entire space so I can make a garden plan and order seeds.

    One of my horticulture classes is on interior plants and I’m enjoying learning the names of the plants I already had and figuring out how to optimize their growing conditions. I bought my first cuttings off a local FB group for plant sales/swaps and I’m picking up a 10 gallon fish tank today that I’m going to convert into a green house and start my seeds early.

  6. For the most part, our Thanksgivings have been pleasant – but then, I like both turkey and my relatives. Not sorry to be having a small one this year with my pod.

    Happy this week has been little interactions. I saw three separate women in the coffee shop (weekly indulgence) who were wearing nice things. I was sitting by the door so managed to tell each of them how much I liked their _____, and they were all pleased. Sometimes people are taken aback, but I figure it’s still good for them. Especially in these days, if someone has made an effort, I think it’s nice to let them know someone noticed.

    1. JenniferNennifer, I love to do this also! I only do it when it’s genuine and I feel like it can give people a momentary boost and then their happiness gives me a boost. I miss not being able to do it much in these semi-quarantine days, but I do it when I can.

  7. Had a fun (over zoom) first date. Unfortunately he’s a morning person, so the second zoom date is coffee in a two hours. We’ll see if he’s charming enough to justify continued 9:30 a.m. interactions.

    I personally love Thanksgiving and Christmas and will miss the giant family get together. We do both potluck style and rotate who hosts, which I think helps people genuinely enjoy it. But I was already prepared for it to change this year. All the cousins but me and the two youngest are now married or living with partners, so our traditions are changing to make room for people to have their own holidays with their kids and partners.

  8. We’re staying home for THanksgiving, which is the wise thing to do, my parents are a healthy ninety, no reason to rock that boat. I do wish we could have a guest or two, it will feel like a party.

    Gravy all the way, I’m going to propose cornbread dressing this year. Usually it’s delicious bread, onions, celery, sage, and sausage…maybe I’ll make cornbread dressing another time.

    Started painting some slate roof tiles for the Christmas fair (outdoor). I’ll try to post them on Instagram when they’re done.

    1. Hmm, dressing. Pretty much the same recipe I use although I add a pound of bacon. I make a lot of dressing. Mom made it with sausage and bacon. Family tradition down through the ages. Love it with fresh cranberry sauce. Poured a bit of orange liquor after cooking the cranberries this year. So good.

        1. Made me laugh! Love it, lots of butter goes well with everything. I do put a butter or a good oil to start it off. Perhaps I had better buy more butter for Christmas dressing.

          Cheers

  9. Two things made me happy this week. My outpatient surgery went fine, and friends helped me through that experience. Second–a literary journal [Mad River Review, which Jenny might remember from WSU] accepted two of my poems for publication. My writing partner and I have been writing a poem a week and submitting something; I’ve picked up several refusals, and these two poems are especially dear to me, so big thrill.

  10. DH and I are currently isolating and planning to get Covid tests later in the week prior to traveling to the next state over to gather with the sibs at the family house on Cape Cod. Haven’t seen any of them in person since late February when the clan gathered for an Aunt’s celebration of life in late February. Both husband and I are technically in the “at risk” group but one of the sibs is REALLY at risk – gets pneumonia just about every year.

    We will NOT be having turkey as the chef (my brother) REALLY dislikes it, so we did a turkey dinner last weekend for DH who NEEDS an annual turkey/stuffing/gravy fix. Butterball has a small frozen turkey roast the includes both light and dark meat which was the perfect size for us. Made the standard fixens but replaced the cranberry sauce with Logan berry jelly from IKEA. It’s really tasty.

    My real joy this week was a FaceTime with E – my 3.5 year old granddaughter. We have been having these calls almost weekly. She has the BEST time showing me her toys, school projects and the “playing” with me. This week she was pretending to make bread as her Mom had just made a fresh loaf that she had for snack.

      1. House we are visiting is too far for just a dinner but close enough to drive to with no stops (4 + hours at most). The household itself is VERY careful due to a resident sib’s risk status. EVERYONE in pre-isolating and Covid testing before gathering.

        Thanks very much for your concern!

        (And then we have other friends from New Mexico who seem to be planning a multi-day, multi-state trip and they are at least a half generation older than we are! I wouldn’t do it. We are basically planning to drive to the the house and pretty much isolate the whole time we are there…will probably be doing some yard work and walks around the near-by cranberry bog, with masks in pockets in case we come near non-household folks.)

        1. Fair enough! Sending well wishes to you and everyone else that Thanksgiving is both healthy and delicious.

  11. When my children were small and before I went back to work I would buy a turkey a few times a year. Then I would ask the butcher to cut in half. So that’s one breast, one wing and one drumstick. It wasn’t easy trying to stuff half a turkey. Now that I’m retired I’m remembering the little perks/benefits of my jobs. One was a free turkey at my first back to work job and second was a grocery store gift card of $25. at Thanksgiving. Companies that do that gesture are a plus because they really don’t have to.

    1. One year when we were in our early twenties and just starting out, a friend got a free turkey from work and decided that he might as well get a big one. He and his wife had just bought a townhouse and decided to go all out on their first holiday in the new place. They had been working their way through an Indian cookbook and couldn’t decide between traditional sides or Indian dishes so they made both. It was all very delicious, but there were only three of us at the table. I don’t remember what they did with all the leftovers (I’m sure I must have brought some home with me), but I imagine they had a very full freezer and made plenty of donations.

  12. I do like turkey, but the neighbors (I’m in their pod/bubble/whatever) I spend the day with don’t, so I think we’re having ham. Which I also like. Meanwhile, I’ve got this crazy urge to make cranberry-orange marmalade (never made it before), which I think would be really good on a left-over ham sandwich. We’ll see. I already made cranberry peach jam, which would also be good with ham.

    For happy — the Romancing the Runoff auction is live now: https://www.32auctions.com/romancingrunoff I’ve got 4 small (3 lap size, 1 smaller) quilts plus three query critiques if anyone’s interested. You can search by author name to see what’s being offered, and it looks pretty amazing. Note that while it’s organized by romance authors, it’s not limited to that genre (obviously, since I’m a mystery writer).

    1. Gin, I just read through the WHOLE set of auction offerings; wow! Your quilts are beautiful, I’m lusting after that purple one so will likely be bidding. So many different items! Everyone, if you haven’t checked this auction out, go look!

  13. Iā€™ve had an especially good weekend: photography Zoom meeting on Saturday morning, lots of work on my planting plans, which have finally gelled – so Iā€™ve started buying the plants (another David Austin rose, The Lark Ascending, plus two polyanthus seed mixes from Barnhaven in France, who warned they wonā€™t be available after December, due to Brexit), another takeaway and film with my friend last night (ā€˜I Know Where Iā€™m Goingā€™, which went down really well. Now I want to go to Mull), and three long phone chats with friends.

    1. We stayed at a tiny B&B in Tobermory on Mull some years ago. It was late November. We crossed to Mull from Oban early in the day so that we could drive across and take the ferry to Iona. The scenery was breathtaking. The woman running the B&B had spent most of her life in Zimbabwe; I learned a great deal about that African country in one night on Mull. And yes, “I Know Where I’m Going” is great fun. Thanks for reminding me of all that.

  14. This year we’re keeping things low key. My MIL is getting frail and the family fears this might be the last holiday season, so all the stops are going to get pulled out. For Tgiving, we’ll have turkey and the family favorites. I brined a turkey a few years ago, so now I’m in charge. (It was so very lovely and moist after brining.) I also supported a couple of neighbor kids and their fundraising efforts, so there should be pies to share too. There should only be six of us. The rest of the extended family will probably stop by in drips and drabs to say hello to the MIL.

    We’ve got a lot to be thankful for – especially me. This time last year, I was in a cast after surgery for a broken ankle, and I hadn’t gotten the thyroid cancer diagnosis. I’m very happy to have that behind me. And my 4 yr old great niece is doing well fighting her liver cancer – the tumors have been removed, and she’s responding as she should to the chemo. Nothing but good times ahead!

  15. Every year, when the subject of turkey dinner comes up, I have the same, repetitive responses. First I mention that my mother was in the running for Worst Cook In North America, and cite the dryness of her turkey as supporting evidence. I’m old enough to realize that turkey is inherently dry, and there are any number of ways to deal with that, starting with companies injecting butter subcutaneously.

    Next I’ll allow that there were things she did very well, one of them being the traditional French Canadian Pork Dressing that all her family served as a side to the turkey. It provided the moisture needed to swallow the turkey, was great by itself, and made wonderful sandwiches.

    Next I’ll allow that when I had a house of my own (as opposed to living with the dotter in her garage), if I was hosting T-day dinner, it was never turkey. It was duck, or goose, or chicken, or a bunch of Cornish hens.

    Whoops! The dotter is ready to go. More later?

  16. We’ll have a small Thanksgiving this year, due to the pandemic. In big years, it is up to 25 people; this year, it will be seven. My sister hosts, and emphatically states that she doesn’t want anyone to bring anything (she likes to control her kitchen), so I will happily throw money at her to help pay. She likes to cook, but her husband loves to cook, so he does most of the cooking. I can cook, but don’t particularly enjoy it, so this works for me! I’ll peel potatoes.

    We’ll gather for four days, tell stories, play penny poker (big winner for the four days might be up $4,) and play board games and do jigsaw puzzles. And eat too much. And yell at football games. Love turkey, love dressing (but my sister hates it, so we don’t have it, but she makes this delicious corn casserole so it’s ok.)

    Our clan gathers annually at Thanksgiving, so everyone can have Christmas with immediate family / other side of the family. We gather at the beach, stay in condos. We’ve been doing this for 40+ years now. Makes me happy!

  17. My happy is my slowly expanding enjoyment of podcasts (just discovered Simple Handmade Everyday, and loving it – I find her voice very soothing, as well as interest in the content), and also participating in my second ever Zoom quilting bee (which has a surprising sense of community, even though we – mainly – don’t know each other in real life)

  18. If I don’t go to my sister’s this Thanksgiving, which I have yet to decide, it isn’t the turkey I will miss. I think the cranberry sauce is my favorite. My niece discovered a new recipe about 10 years ago that I crave all year long. I will also miss miss my sister’s pies. I could always make a a pumpkin cheesecake, my annual contribution, but that is far too dangerous to have in my refrigerator. Having a few pieces over 2 days is one thing, but a 9″ cheesecake for one person is more than my health can handle.

  19. I’m happy to skip the big family dinner celebrations. They were great when I was a kid; but, now with many people gone, they have just become forced.

    I seem to have developed a food intolerance to poultry (I’m good with organic, but not regularly processed chicken) so I have to avoid the turkey and anything that includes poultry broth. There’s usually plenty of other things to choose from.

    Since it’s just me, I’ll probably try a new lasagna recipe.

    Maybe I’ll Skype or just phone my sisters.

    As for happy-It’s been a good weekend. I’ve caught up on a couple of things and have had time to relax.

  20. I’m a better baker than a cook. The King Arthur Baking website is my idea of food porn.
    It is finally cool enough that you want to play in the kitchen again.

    I’m dithering about what to do this year for Thanksgiving. While part of me would love to join in the meal with the family, another part of me is scared. We’ve had two family birthday parties in the last 30 days but the weather was mild and the parties were held outdoors. I may drop off my normal food contributions and scram. Dither, dither.

  21. Okay. Turkey Recipes, Take Two.

    Can I Blame It On 2020?

    As previously (often) mentioned, the dotter and I shop and dine out on Sundays. What with the pandemic, we still shop but do takeaway instead of dining in restaurants.

    Tonight was WalMart* and Outback Steak House. There was a slight mix-up – we were given an order belonging to Barbara Someone instead of our own. So, I called to let them know. Barbara might be happy with our sirloin and ribeye, but her chicken fingers didn’t turn us on at all.

    Manager Katie is having our meal remade and delivered. This is why I keep going back there. šŸ™‚

    Back to turkey, then. This year, the dotter will be visiting Beloved Son and his family in North Carolina. Since her Volkswagen Routan has s**t the bed again, she’ll be borrowing my car. Since I have to work on T-day, she’ll be dropping me off noonish on the way to Bubba’s House and taking half the grandkinder with her. (The other half will be visiting their father’s family.)

    I don’t know the recipes my DiL will be using. I suspect deep fat frying might be involved. Also ham and yams. The dotter talked about bringing her jellied meatballs. I might send a pie.

    As I said, I work that day. I’ll be having a Stouffers Turkey Dinner and other stuff I won’t mention, because mentioning that stuff pre-transfers the calories, carbs and sugar to me.

    Maybe I’ll make some pork dressing.

  22. I’m not going to talk about Thanksgiving since I will be 100% alone and it will most likely suck.

    I did just finish my play, Charlotte’s Web. We did four live shows this weekend and they are going to put together a more finished/edited together show and air a recording of it for the other three performances. I haven’t been able to see the show myself pretty much at all because we’ve been using green screens and having to stand 10 feet away from the laptop, so I’m looking forward to seeing what it’s supposed to look like. I have no idea how it’s supposed to look. They were planning on doing a LOT of special effects and had us working with green screens to that effect, which is difficult.

    There were a lot of technical difficulties–as someone pointed out, doing the first show on Friday the 13th probably caused the computer system with all the special effects to utterly crash a few minutes before showtime. Like, they had to give up on special effects entirely halfway through the show and offered free tickets for anyone who wanted to see the second act as intended. They had to completely reconfigure things as far as I heard. I have no idea how the show ended up looking, but we ended up scrapping the blocking in which we were supposed to pretend to look at people, our green screens were probably(?) showing, etc. Very confusing.

    Show was fun, though! I’m sad to think I probably can’t do any other shows for awhile due to The Holiday Season. I have NEEDED plays for distraction. However, I can look forward to the cast party online and watching the show myself in another week or two.

    1. Iā€™ve more or less mastered Christmas on my own, and recommend facing the Thanksgiving challenge by planning a meal youā€™ll really enjoy plus activities such as a walk in a favourite place; connecting with friends; good films to watch – whatever youā€™d love to do. If I focus on what Iā€™d really enjoy itā€™s much easier to ignore all the messages that Iā€™m somehow a failure and must be miserable if Iā€™m not doing what the culture (mostly advertisers) say I should.

  23. When I as on the El on my way to deliver cookies, I realized that perhaps not everyone would be happy to get cookies that I baked unmasked and ungloved. I needn’t have worried. When I dropped off the plastic bag at Dave’s smaller store, his employees were discussing making ice cream sandwiches with cookies. And in I walked with cookies of the perfect size and type. They were excited and that made me very happy. This is the real reason I bake.

  24. I had a day off on Friday. It helped me to gain a teeny bit of perspective. So on Saturday, I started cleaning out my desk while watching Marie Kondo on Netflix.

    The second question in the show after spark joy was, “do you want this to be part of your life going forward” has helped put some things in perspective.

  25. My Mayflower Zoom meeting on Friday went well, though I was a bit swallowed up by the Puritan cap (probably intended for someone with a full head of long hair; mine is short), so that’s happy-making. The kittens joined us.

    I loved family Thanksgivings years ago, but over the last twenty years we’ve steadily lost family members, and my cousins have moved on to family dinners with their children and grandchildren, so now we’re down to my brother and me, our tenant, and a request for me to take leftovers to a cousin and her husband in preventative quarantine on the Sunday. I guess the advantage to this is that the tenant is a vegan, so I may turn over the veggie dishes to her and come up with something else as my contribution.

    The best turkey I produced in recent years was a Turkey Cake from Baskin Robbins. If you have at least twelve people — otherwise you’re dealing with MAJOR leftover ice cream — it’s likely to be a real surprise to the diners. A hoot!

  26. Thanksgiving is my absolute favorite holiday. I always go to a friendā€™s house in Utah and celebrate with her and her daughters, who are my nieces in every way except blood.

    We spend Tuesday evening and all day Wednesday baking and prepping for a mostly vegetarian dinner. (There is a turkey.) We generally make 4 or 5 pies/tartsā€” pumpkin always, but also usually some kind of apple and then whatever NYT or other recipe catches our fancy over the course of the year. We have a plan for what needs to be done and when, what can go into the oven with what, etc. The day is nothing but fun.

    Then the four of us and other friends from out of town gather Thursday afternoon and eat and drink to our heartā€™s content. The food is always good, since we are all pretty good cooks.

    It makes me sad that the idiocy of so many has made it impossible to gather this year. It is a real loss. Luckily, one of the nieces is in town, so we are going to figure something out. It canā€™t be the normal way we do things, but I hope we can at least see each other!

    Christmas on the other hand I can live without. I love my family, but we always regress, people get snappish… it can get tense. Not as bad as some families, but it can be a lot for me.

  27. Growing up, Thanksgiving was my parents, my sibs and me. After I married, and we were both working, and we had a house, and we lived no where near family without a 4 hour drive, Thanksgiving meant a 4 day weekend that we could commit to major house projects. So for most of my adult life, T’day was holding a tape measure, or a sanding block, or a paint brush. We were always thankful that we finished another project, although there are always more on the horizon.

  28. I had several reasons to be happy this week. I had a long skype with my brother and SIL in France and was glad to hear that she is healing well from her hip replacement. I returned all the books that other people were awaiting and renewed all the others so that I’ll have plenty to read when we go back into lock down again tomorrow.

    The holiday only chocolate has arrived at Aldi! I bought a big bag full of my favorites and squirreled it away for doling out over the coming months. I don’t have as many people to deliver goodies to this year, but the ones who are still laboring in retail need treats more than ever. They are all doing their utmost to stay in business and whatever I can do to help them hang in there, I want to do. I already buy almost all my gifts from them, so this is what is left. And thanks to the extra food stamps I received earlier in the year, I can afford to treat everyone. I’m sure Mitch McConnell doesn’t approve, which makes it even more fun.

    I also found my usual package of toilet paper at the usual price there which I appreciated. The Target across the street had lots of empty shelves but evidently the hoarders haven’t made it to the budget grocery yet. They made life very difficult for those of us without cars last time and I wasn’t looking forward to coping with that again.

    Today we had wind gusts of up to 50mph and my new coat stood up to it beautifully. This was a real relief because I think this winter will be a severe one and I was very nervous buying a coat on ebay. I hate buying clothing without trying it on and it took me a few tries to find something that would fit and be warm enough in my price range, but I hope this will fill the bill for the next few years. This coat covers a lot more of me than the jacket I am replacing so I think my mother would approve.

  29. I always fantasize about a Martha Stewart holiday. I’m a nurse and I planned my first 2 pregnancies to get a Thankgiving/Christmas maternity leave. Now I am mainly looking forward to enough leftovers so I don’t need to cook for 4 days. No delusions of grandeur this year.

  30. I was planning to order a smoked turkey from Greenberg’s again until I got their email saying their shipping facility burned down. šŸ™ Nobody was hurt and they’re rebuilding, but no turkeys this year. I guess next year I’ll order one for T-day *and* one for Xmas.

    On the happiness side, got a ton of writer business done Sunday after spending most of Saturday in the recovery position precipitated by last week’s excessive work stress. Also got caught up with Star Trek: Discovery and did some overdue housework.

    Today it is warm, sunny, and dry, and I’m going to see if I can clock out an hour early to get things thoroughly watered before another cold front moves in.

  31. We’ll do virtual Thanksgiving visits but have real food.

    Happiness included letting DH take the clippers to my Einstein-like hair. I now have a modern pixie with just one rough patch that doesn’t show up on Zoom anyhow.

  33. The past couple of years I go to a girlfriend house, neither of us has children or husbands and she has a turkey breast deep fried & I make a sweet potato casserole & we drink champagne.

  34. Turkey Recipes Take 3

    I was in Food Lion today, and got reminded that Hormel makes a turkey slices and gravy dinner (year round.) I was there for bottled water (Deerpark, by choice) and carbonated beverages. Got the water, but they had no diet A-n-W nor caffeine-free diet coke, (I haven’t figured out how to show the ampersand betwixt the A and the W. Argh!)

    But There I Was. So I bought a couple of Stouffers Turkey Dinners (large, but not family size.) And there was one of my favorites: turkey tetrazzini. I bought three, and the hard part will be saving them for T-day. I may have to restock.

    Sew. Am I eating dinner alone on That Day? Yes. Am I eating dessert alone on That Day? Yes. Can I deal with it? Fer Sure. It ain’t the first time.

  35. I love turkey, especially leftovers. But the Swedish meatballs and lingonberry sauce I made over the weekend also made me happy, especially when both my kids had seconds. For Thanksgiving, though, I’ll be cooking for myself (plus leftovers) and the cats since the kids will be with their dad this year.

    My extended family is making plans for a distancing holiday season. We’ve drawn names for gifts, made arrangements to safely deliver them, and will be having a Zoom meeting on Christmas Eve to open them together. There will probably be 20+ of us. I’m looking forward to it!

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