Thanksgiving

Whoa.  Thanksgiving.  It's my favorite holiday because I love to cook and I love to eat.  I love food, period.  Christmas is my second favorite holiday because it has all the same foods (at least, in my family it does) but it also has shopping which I'm not nearly as fond of as cooking.

Anyway, Thanksgiving.  It was delicious.  I made a turkey for the second time.  Last year was my first and I brined it with a pretty sweet brining solution -- "sweet" as in fruity, not as in a surfer dude's "Hey, man! Sweet waves today!"  (Although, surfers usually surf in salt water and brining solutions do contain a lot of salt.  But this really has nothing to do with Turkey Day.  Sorry for that brief foray into my distracted thought process.)  This year I went a little more savory.  There was nothing wrong with last year's brine but I wanted to try something different.  This year's brine was still sweet but more tempered with things like bay leaves and peppercorns and rosemary.  It was so good.  My mouth is watering thinking about it again.  Also, the turkey was huge.  We had to brine it in the massive pot that Caleb uses to brew beer.

Jennifer and I went in together on the cooking and food prep at her house because she's the only one with enough space for that sort of thing. I love her kitchen.  It's huge.  On Tuesday night I went to her place with my car full to the gills with cooking utensils, ingredients, baking pans and my mixer.  We set up the brining situation and called it a night.  (Another plug for living in Colorado -- this turkey and its pot were so big there is no way we could have fit it into the fridge but it was cold enough that we could leave it to sit in the garage all night!  Yay for temps in the low 20s!)

On Wednesday I went back to Jennifer's house, changed into some comfy PJs, poured a glass of wine and got busy!  We chopped veggies and nuts, shredded cheese, mixed pie crusts, mashed potatoes, whipped up pie fillings, dried bread crumbs and had a grand old time.  Friends from Texas arrived late that night and the children had a great time playing video games and chasing each other all over the house.  The adults opened more wine, turned up the music and continued food preparations until 3:00 am.  It was so much fun!

Thursday morning began bright and early with more cooking, roasting, boiling, baking and stirring.  We finally ate around 2:00 pm.  Everything was really good.  I wish I'd had the ability to eat more food but even that night when everyone usually eats the first of the leftovers, I was still too full.  Bummer.

After the meal we sat around the dining table and had a nice Pinot Noir tasting.  The friends from Texas brought a couple of Pinot Noir wines from New Zealand (they lived there for 9 months last year!  Lucky!) and Paul brought over a couple of Colorado Pinot Noir wines.  We all sampled and critiqued and tasted.  Then we opened a dessert wine and a honey wine to try with our desserts.  It was a superb time.  We should do it again before next Thanksgiving because we deserve to eat like that because it's Tuesday sometimes, you know?

The rest of the afternoon was spent playing Carcassone, one of our most favorite board games.  I think I can mark this holiday down as one of the best ever; it ranks right up there with the first Thanksgiving after The Divorce and with the New Year's Eve I spent alone with my homemade pizza and sangria.  Yum.  Truly can't wait to do it again.