Thanksgiving was five star

Thanksgiving was just lovely, all the food hot at once, the game hen plump and tenders and juicy. 

Before Handsome Son arrived with his share, Mike the Artist Contractor came over with home cooked, he's a great cook, additions for our table before he left for his own gathering.

A helping each of the best mac n cheese I've ever had, and a container of sweet potato in maple syrup with a topping.  

Chocolate chip soft cookies, warm, so good.

Handsome Son had brought pumpkin pie and cream, garlic potatoes, assorted crackers and cheeses and ginger ale.

I did the game hen, cranberry sauce, green beans and corn.  So we had a feast.

We simplified everything years ago, no fancy serving plates, just serve ourselves from the stove top, leaving the rest of the food in the warm oven so second helpings are still hot. 

This works better than the serving dishes which looked festive, and where the food would cool and need to be reheated.

HS went home with a good bit of the pie, cream and cookies. 

Since I don't need auto stuff now, I also added in my battery jump-starting kit and a quart of oil I'd had in reserve.  

He left quite pleased with his haul. 

A good day was had by all. Oh, a pome.

I spent the evening darning the warm socks, now more and more darn

while I listened to Reverend Richard reading his own Murder before Evensong.

Happy day everyone, I hope your day whether a holiday or just a Thursday, was good.  Sez Ted and Big Ursy

Thanksgiving prep and thanks

First prep was to text several friends to tell them I'm thankful to have them in my life.

That done, since for once Handsome Son is not working Thanksgiving Day, nor Friday, we're celebrating Thursday, the "right" day.

Here's the pretty simple food, my part of it -- he brings a lot of other food -- in the fridge, prepped to roast Wednesday evening, and on the counter to heat Thursday. Using canned veg is a recent thing to save my energy.

Done ahead, warm through Thursday, smelling very good 

 

And the table is set up 

Tea lights found in the freezer and set up on the hearth.

Meanwhile Wednesday was about tofu katsu, which was browner and crisper than it looks here

and reading 

a great social history of domestic service and how Virginia Woolf conducted herself with the women who served her and provided her with the care and space which enabled her to write. I expect they'd have liked a room of their own, too.  

Light portrays, in a well researched and compassionate look, all the lives affected by domestic service in the England of the nineteenth into twentieth century. This has been described as a history of women, either working in service or hiring into service.

Before I leave, just a word of thankfulness for you, blogistas. I publish daily, at midnight my time, so that I'll have something to get up for next morning -- your comments. And you lift me up and educate and entertain me each day, thank you.

And let's remember the people who really put the food on our American tables

Thanksgiving cactus checking in

The thanksgiving cactus is budding up nicely, just in time. 

And I'm up for a quiet day, cannellini and chard soup, roast cheesy potatoes, jigsaw puzzle, all planned.

And reading is appropriate for the day

I'm thankful I'm able to do what I do, and for the generous presence of all you blogistas! If it's just Thursday where you are, happy day anyway. Or if it's Friday, same, same.

Textiles and Tea, Freecycle and toes

Textiles and Tea this week introduced weaver, painter, clothing designer, Chickasaw member 

her family can be traced back to the thirteenth century in Mississippi.  Her fourth great grandmother was a child left behind after a battle, collected and cared for by Chickasaw people, grew up with them, and married into the Chickasaw people.

She has produced authentically styled Chickasaw costumes for historical productions, on a Smithsonian fellowship, has had work shown in the New York Met, and has costumed a production planned for 2024 with a symphony orchestra, at Carnegie Hall.

She's also been a production weaver of wearable art. Her painter training and eye shows up as you study her work. She's taught many Guild workshops over the years, and has recently cut back on her projects for health reasons. Not that you'd notice!

It seems appropriate to honor a native American's talents this week, instead of the fake history we've been taught around Thanksgiving.  Where I live was the home of the Lenni Lenape, and I  thank them when I go out walking daily on what was literally their home territory. The six lane Route One, a mile away,  was before the seventeenth century advent of the Dutch, an Indian walking path between waterways. 

Back home, in the process of laying a simple table

 for our Thanksgiving, I found I could part with a couple of things. These linen napkins I turmeric-dyed and stamped using my hand carved stamps were nice,  but not needed

And this six cup porcelain teapot is a bit too heavy for my wrists now. I put them on free cycle and they were literally gone in half an hour to a very happy  lady.

Thanksgiving celebration this year is less work for me than usual. But first,  I have a footnote (!) about fitness and aging. 

I've been working on that toe raising exercise to maintain my walking, the one I showed you  recently on YouTube. Yesterday I found I can raise my toes, i.e. stand on my heels,  without support. First time evah. I've always been able to raise my toes, but never without support. Just shows! 

I still don't have the core strength any more, since I turned 80+, to get up from the floor without supports. Back in my 70s I could do that, and various other things. Now, though I'm fitter than most, in fact I've outlived almost everyone I knew in my age group, there are still things an octo can't manage that a septo can. Enjoy what you can do while you can!

Happy day, everyone, I hope your plans are good this week, with or without Thanksgiving.

Misfits and a Shilling for Candles

Yesterday's misfits included a wild extravaganza of berries -- out of season raspberries and the usual blueberries. The raspberries are wonderful with good honey and homemade yogurt 

I always marvel at the beauty of brown eggs, and these are so fresh, they rest right at the bottom of the pot when you boil them. I often have a boiled egg and whole grain toast for tea. Or pita bread filled with spinach and egg salad.

And the cranberries are already sauce. I make this very simply, berries, sugar and lemon juice.

And I've been serving it for years in the glass container my sister gave me many years ago, one of the few things she gave me, and treasured accordingly.

While I knit, I've been listening to this old, a bit dated, but still good, Tey. I like all her work, particularly Daughter of Time, which rehabilitated Richard III using actual research, not the wildly inaccurate pop version by Shakespeare.

 

And when I need to read words, because I can't knit endlessly, poor me, I'm doing a weird alternation on Kindle between the Jane Seymour book by Alison Weir and Crampton Hodnet by Barbara Pym. 

The second one is an in-joke, Crampton being part of Pym's family name. And it's one of the best of her novels, with marvelous comic scenes, very movie-like. The Weir, with its social rules and expectations in dress, deportment and food references, has a lot more in common than you might think, with the humor absent. Also no violent death in Pym. At least not physical death. Social death is another issue.

A lot of interesting observations on friendship and falling lately,  thank you all. I learn from you all the time.

Happy day, everyone, I'm off to throw the Thanksgiving red cloth over the incomplete puzzle on the table, then set it up, but simply this year. Tomorrow we celebrate, on Handsome Son's day off.

In Thursday I'll be alone, neighbors mostly away to relatives for the week, but I'll be taking part in Spoutible online high jinks for other people alone on the day.  Or maybe medium jinks, we'll see. It's all good.

Happy Thanksgiving

I'm thankful for so much, health, long life still going on, the friendship of handsome Son, good neighbors, the ability to walk out in the sun, to make things, so much.

Here on my blog I'm thankful for all of you, your friendship and generosity, especially when you comment and take part, you're wonderful. Take a bow!

 

Ready for curtain up!

Today chez Boud is Thanksgiving, to fit in with handsome Son who's off today and working most of Thursday.

So here's the table

Cranberry sauce in progress

And the doings, ready to cook

Meanwhile I have to get out my pearls, which come out on holidays and birthdays, and we'll have a lovely day.

Happy day everyone, and before I forget, have you been furrowing your brows over the puzzle?  Answer: forehead! That one took me ages.

Pre-Tday

Today I'm roasting the turkey breast, turning the (canned this year) cranberry sauce out into a favorite dish, finding the cooked sweet potato in the freezer, searching for the red tablecloth, seeking out the serving dishes, remembering how many handy pie dishes are now plant saucers, and wondering yet again how come cooking for two should entail as much chaos as for ten. And yet it does.  I've become that old lady who lays the table the day before!

It's nice to use the Shawnee corn dishes, the Paden City platters, the other ones whose name I forget, the cheese board, all American as can be.

And this is only the main course. Handsome Son is in charge of drinks, crackers and cheese, and pie of his choice, almost certainly pumpkin, and the required cream. That all comes with him tomorrow.

In times like this, read a bit of history and we realize they're not really all that unusual, it's good to find things to be thankful for. And let's not do shabby comparisons. I'm not impressed by a person feeling better because others have it worse. 

But I am thankful for our good humored blogistas, now joined I see, by a couple of blogistos, welcome gennumen, for Handsome Son, local and loyal, nice neighbors, ability to walk the neighborhood daily, roof over head, solvency, so much.

And for the generous talent of Maggie Rudy, whose Thanksgiving wish I send you here