jayfurr | Thanksgiving

We are not traveling at all for Thanksgiving.

There is NO WAY that I'm going to voluntarily subject myself to the tender mercies of our nation's air carriers on Thanksgiving weekend when I'd be the one paying for the tickets and rebooking fees and so forth.

It's one thing to travel for work where I know my employer will cover any weird situations that come up, such as my needing to rent a car to drive from an airport to which I was rerouted and to my intended destination. It's another thing to find myself sitting in, say, Jacksonville, Florida when my bags have gone on to Tampa and knowing that a last-minute rental car to get myself to Tampa is going to cost $200 which the airlines aren't about to reimburse me for.

We saw my parents for a couple of days in May before driving on down to Key West to get my diving certification and we're apparently going to see Carole's parents in December when Carole's sister-in-law will be performing in a play in Bennington, Vermont, so I don't personally feel like we're being horribly bad children by not making that extra effort to go spend Thanksgiving with them.

Instead, we're going to the brunch at the New England Culinary Institute's restaurant at the Inn at Essex, about ten miles from our house. We went last year and enjoyed it very much, only yours truly sorta-kinda forgot about making a reservation this year until a couple of weeks ago and as a result we wound up having to take a 10:30 am reservation. They'll have the same food out that they'd have at 1 pm so it's not as though we'll be limited to breakfast food while later-arriving guests get the turkey and all the trimmings. It's just a little weird to think of Thanksgiving dinner that early.

I did purchase a turkey breast, some potatoes and turnips, mince pie fixins, and other staples of a basic Thanksgiving dinner last night at the supermarket and I'll fix those after we get home so we'll still have "Thanksgiving leftovers" in the refrigerator.

I was all set to skip making the mashed potatoes and turnips (trust me, it's good that way, and a lot of fine restaurants include turnips in their mashed potatoes without even telling you, so don't give me that look) but Carole acted disappointed at the idea. Nonetheless, I'm going to do what I can to make them low-fat.

I've got tons of winter squash in the basement and so I'll either make pumpkin/squash pie or make baked squash for a dinner side item and then make mince pie for dessert. I found a few years ago that I can make a perfectly acceptable mince pie without even using the little boxes of Nonesuch mince pie filling that they sell in the stores, simply by using apples and currants and a bit of molasses, but, okay, I did buy one box of the Nonesuch stuff just in case I needed it. (I still think it's a bit odd to put suet into a pie, but standard mincemeat for a mince pie contains suet and I've apparently eaten it thousands of times over the years without giving it a second thought at the time.)

I assume we'll otherwise spend Thanksgiving day at home not doing much. When we get home from our brunch I'll have to start preparing the turkey and pie and so forth and in and among doing that I'll probably watch some football. No idea what Carole will do.

We both have Friday off so perhaps we can get some exercise in. I keep hoping we'll get a bit of snow so we can do some snowshoeing.

I hope everyone out there has a happy holiday as well and I hope y'all have a lot to be thankful for. I'll make sure to say a special little prayer to the FSM in hopes that you who are traveling arrive safely. Take care.