Thanksgiving 2009

Today felt more like Fake Thanksgiving than last week.  Thanksgiving is my very favorite holiday but today never felt quite right.  It was certainly a nice day spent with family, but I missed the rest of our group and our normal Thanksgiving routine.  Today was really just an excuse to have a nice fancy dinner.

I began work on the Apple Spice Cake during the Macy's Parade (as an aside, I really want to go see it again, as long as people don't fall out of windows and land on the person standing next to me...).  Perhaps being a little too forceful with my new and awesome pink knife, I sliced through an apple and straight through the side of my left index finger, on the knuckle.  Much blood and pain and bandaids later, it has mostly stopped bleeding.  It probably wasn't bad enough for stitches but perhaps could have been glued or something (it is not so much deep as a sideways slice so there's a huge flap of skin).

As delicious as my cake is, both times I have made it, I have had bundt pan issues.  The first time, the cake came out so quickly that it slid out of the pan and broke in half.  This time, half came out easily and half was stuck.  Still tasty but not at all pretty...

I set the table, digging out the tablecloth.  I even got all crafty and made pretty placecards and menus.  Perhaps a bit much for 3 people, but I really enjoy setting a nice looking table.  I wish I had a larger table so there was really room for everything.

Maybe I should have ironed the table cloth first.  Oh well.

The boys arrived promptly at 2.  Perhaps they have finally learned how I value promptness.  Veggies were served all afternoon.  I also made, especially for David, pepperoni bread.  Sadly, I brought crescent roll dough instead of the pizza dough, but they still came out ok.  Oops.

Pepperoni Bread, made with crescent rolls instead of pizza dough

Instead of a traditional Thanksgiving meal, we were going with an Italian theme this year.  Since we did the whole turkey dinner last week, it really didn't make sense to do it again this week.  David doesn't eat it and it's a lot of work for 2 people.  I made lasagna instead.  Dad was lots of help (he was awesome to help with the onion cutting!) and David (and Gerald) took a nap on the couch.

I am thankful this holiday season that Dad doesn't have nearly the awful reaction I do to onion chopping.

David getting all the sleep he can before he has to show up for work at 4:45 tomorrow morning.  Poor kid!

Dinner itself was yummy - lasagna, salad and garlic bread.  Afterward, we watched this week's episode of Glee - Dad and David enjoyed their first glimpse of the show, I think.  The cake tasted good despite how it looked.

An Italian Thanksgiving (with Clio keeping watch in the background)

All in all, it was a nice day.  I'm thankful this holiday week (both Thanksgiving celebrations) for getting to spend the time with my family - while we occasionally don't see eye to eye on some things, I truly enjoy it when we are all able to get together and enjoy one another's company.  It happens more and more infrequently these days.