Our day started at about nine, luxuriating in being Kittenless, but driven to get up and start moving. And so we did. Margie swung into action in the kitchen, beginning her cooking wonderfulness. I started darting about the downstairs rooms, picking up and putting away and restacking and shuffling items hither and thither, so that when folk came over, there would be places to sit and chat and eat.
Oh, and I started ripping all of our Christmas CDs (once I found them) to that we’d have plenty of good holiday music. Ironically, I discovered most of them in the CD player in the entertainment center, which tells me we hadn’t really done much with musical ambience en masse since last Twelfth Night. Since our DVD player plays CDs, too, it’s where we usually throw in one-off discs.
Folk started showing up around 2 or so, I think. Jackie came over with Justin and Kitten. Stan and Randy showed up shortly thereafter. Food started to appear on the table to nibble on — nuts, crackers and cheese (including a very yummy “cheesecake” hot cheese spread that Margie whipped up, stuff like that. Margie’d brought in some mint from the back yard, still sheltered under the forsythia, and heated up some simple sauce with it to combine with squeezed lemons and rum for mojitos.
We’d toyed with barbecuing the turkey this year, but everyone’s consensus was to go once again with the deep fried, so that’s what we did. We set up on the back deck, with a large set of obsolete drapes as a drop cloth underneath. That was fine, until we actually put the turkey in. Margie’d estimated the amount of oil to put in, rather than use water displacement (since she’d gotten the turkey all dried off). And when I started lowering the turkey in, it began to spatter alarmingly, so I dropped it the rest of the way in pretty quickly.
The result was a large fountaining of hot oil all over several square feet of deck. Eep.
Aside from that, cooking the turkey was relatively uneventful. Doyce eventually made it over, with the dogs, having recovered some from his PC ordeal. More chit-chat, more drinking, chip and guac — and discovering that breakfast room is a much better hang-out place now that the rear doors open outward instead of inward.
Everything seemed to be ready simultaneously, and we initiated the new buffet with a full load of Thanksgiving goodies — turkey carved by Margie, traditional and “harvest” stuffing, some sort of yummy creamy potatoes, spinach, rolls, salad … some ’92 Rafanneli Zin, a number of different whites …
And a long walk around the block (or two) afterwards. At which point it was time for Jackie’s pumpkin rolls and my own pecan pies.
We retired to the living room for digestion, chit-chat about ring-tones, and several quite entertaining bouts of True Colors. (The group consensus seems to be that I’m a traditionalist fuddy-duddy who has a secret pr0n addiction. Ahem.)
People headed on home, we did some quick kitchen clean-up, and off to bed. Much fun, and a delightful evening.