Thanksgiving Day 2008

Today was such a fantastic day. Dh, Kev and I all took dishes to prepare which made the cooking much easier.

I woke up at 6am to the sound of a downpour. It makes a very different sound than normal household noises, of course there is a similarity to rushing water, but also a pounding sound.

When I put the turkey on the grill around 10:30am, the sky looked very dark and foreboding to the north of us.

It rained after awhile and while Kev was washing dishes he spotted a fantastic shot outside the kitchen window - raindrops gathered on one of our Palo Verde trees. We both went out with our cameras to see what we could capture.

I managed to capture a very lovely Bokeh photo. I finally remembered to download Pioneer Woman's "actions". This one is SOOC - "straight out of camera".

This next one is the last photo, but photoshopped with Pioneer Woman's "action" PW's B&W. Is this not a lovely photo? One single raindrop. Wow, I love it.

Dh made his Sticky-D's World Famous All You Can Eat Chocolate Chunky Poopy Pie.

Here's the recipe:

Kev cut up vegetables for our veggie tray; I made my homemade Ranch style dip. Kev says I need to write the recipe down in case I die.


Today I used 1/2 cup Daisy Sour Cream and 1/2 cup homemade goat milk yogurt. Then I just added these items: parsley flakes, 2 crushed cloves of garlic, onion powder, pinch of paprika, black pepper, salt, pinch of garlic powder. Mix and serve with veggies.

Kev made Green Beans Almondine. Here's the beautiful fresh green beans cooking in a cast iron skillet.


Dh made the dressing he and Kev came up with a few years ago. Recipe to follow one day soon.

I kept my camera in my pocket most of the day - when we went out to milk around 1:00. There were some amazing clouds.

I made my traditional potato rolls. Kev was quite enthralled with the Parkerhouse rolls, although he didn't get one. He got one that peeled apart like a cinnamon roll. Usually I only make crescent-shaped rolls. I only used 1/4 whole wheat flour this time, with white unbleached King Arthur's Bread Flour for the rest. I didn't want to stop and grind more wheat berries. They are the best I've made in years. I think the bread flour helped a lot.

Here's a shot of the table with all the fixin's. The lovely snowman plates are courtesy of my amazing mother-in-law. She found a full set at a thrift store either 3 or 4 years ago, and I exclaimed how gorgeous they were and she wanted me to have them.

We had our Thanksgiving Dinner around 3:30pm. I went and laid down for a while - my feet are still bothering me. They are better, but standing on them for many hours still makes them hurt and my lower back has started to bother me, too, so I had to lay down for about twenty minutes. The food hadn't been put away and so I finally got up so I could get things put away and relax. Kev helped me, and we actually cleaned the kitchen! We are really lax about cleaning the dishes after dinner around here. I told the guys this morning the only rule was that each of us had to clean up after ourselves. Since we were all cooking something, and taking turns in the kitchen, it was pretty important to keep caught up on the dishes and cookware.

While I was washing the dishes, I remembered how my aunt used to take me and my siblings on a walk after Thanksgiving Dinner, and then I don't remember what led to this next, but I wanted to have a fire and sit out around it. Kev had been working on hymns, so I said maybe we could sit around a "campfire" and sing hymns. It's so quiet and dark out there, and voices travel for miles. It took a little bit to get the fire started, because it's been raining after all. Kev and I dug a shallow pit first, lining the dirt around the circle. Dh heard us talking outside and decided to come see what we were up to. We tried to get ds1 to join us, but he doesn't fancy being outside after dark, in the cold, where there might be werewolves, for heaven's sake!


Me and my honey. If you click on the image to see a bigger version, you will see two bright lights in the background. Dh said it was the space station Jupiter and Venus (CORRECTION: I couldn't really remember what he said last night, and could have sworn he said it was the space station, so asked him this morning if he'd said that and he exclaimed that he'd told me Jupiter and Venus. I remember I was taking pictures or something, so I wasn't listening). The Milky Way is also very visible out here. When we first moved out, we promised ourselves we'd get into stargazing since we can see so many billions of stars out here in the country. It used to be pitch black at night when we first moved out, but a lot more people have moved out that have installed their own personal street light. Oh, and dh just informed me that Pluto is no longer a planet.


Our handsome son, Kev, and Echo, his guitar.

We sat outside for about an hour singing hymns. Kev taped it, I've asked him if he'll cut me out one bit of our singing. We sounded okay, it's the first time we've sang together and taped ourselves. Like I said earlier, voices travel long distances in our area... we often hear people having parties with music from miles away. We wondered if anyone could hear us "hymning".

Until next time.