“I think it’s about time we take over the Thanksgiving dinner.” K and I were talking about what we would be doing this year, what plans we thought the Elders might have/desire.  Christmas Eve had always been our responsibility, and the Elders sort of took Thanksgiving by default. But this year, we decided to charge, make plans, and cook dinner ourselves and invite the Elders as opposed to the opposite. More to the point, K always takes are of Christmas Eve (by and large), so I decided this year I would do the whole Thanksgiving dinner myself.

The morning’s weather might have seemed like an omen for the less convinced. Snow in late November, in South Carolina?

Before Thanksgiving? Yet the chill in the air somehow made the work go easier: a mental thing I guess. What else can you do but stay inside? What else can you do while inside but cook?

And so I started. First, the garnish: cranberry sauce with dried cherries and a few dried blueberries.

Butternut squash soup, freestyle. I looked at some recipes, but none of them had the I-don’t-know-what I was looking for. So I made my own recipe, which included leftover ricotta cheese and some curry powder.

By the time I was ready to move on to stuffing, the snow had stopped, the sky had cleared, and the dusting of white on the ground had disappeared, as had L’s excitement.

“If it keeps snowing today, and tomorrow, and maybe Saturday and Sunday, maybe we’ll be out of school Monday!” I thought that we might be lucky if the snow lasts until the afternoon, but I said nothing.

By then, I was busy with the dressing, using a recipe I’d found online that included the magic, attention-getting word: sausage.

Two casseroles popped into and out of the oven as well, and by the time we were putting the kids to bed, I’d started the final element for the day, the giblet gravy.

Tomorrow, the potatoes, the green beans with shallots and almonds, and something else. Seems I’m missing something. Oh well. Hopefully, we can live without whatever it is…