Thanksgiving

Well, yesterday was Thanksgiving. JJ and JA came over, which was quite a treat. I made a lemon meringue pie, rolls, and cranberry sauce. Wednesday night, I made our traditional lime jello with crushed pineapple, cream cheese and pecans. My mom made the turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes and garlicky green beans. JA brought Thai pumpkin soup and candied yams. It was way too much food, which is ideal on Thanksgiving.

The pie turned out great, considering it was my first pie. The rolls were also much better, or at least more normal this time. After making so much pizza dough, I've learned that I may need to add extra flour to get it to the right consistency. More importantly, I've learned what the right consistency is. I also liked making the jello, since it was pretty easy. The cranberry sauce was pretty easy, too, actually. The pie was a little more challenging, particularly the pie filling.

One of the problems that I've had with making dough, including cookie dough, is that thick dough in my Kitchenaid mixer causes the bowl to rotate on its screw on base. It's to such a degree that I find it impossible to get it off. Even my dad had difficulties yesterday. I've googled and haven't been able to find a solution to this problem, but I'm considering adding some sort of lubrication to see if that helps.

It really was fun having JJ and JA over. It's always much nicer to have guests on Thanksgiving, so it seems more like a holiday. I love JA's soup, too. I don't generally like orange vegetables in dishes, but his pumpkin soup is a wonderful exception. I, for example, am not willing to eat yams, sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie, cooked carrots or butternut squash (with the exception of butternut squash ravioli). It's no wonder my night vision is lousy. Raw carrots are fine, as are carrot cake and pumpkin bread.

The weather was interesting yesterday, too. Early in the morning, we had a storm that just sort of flew through. One minute there were partly cloudy skies and the next, it was black overhead. It was gone quickly as it came. The rest of the day was extremely windy with deep blue skies and puffy white clouds as the temperature dropped precipitously.

Today, as soon as I got dressed, I immediately started washing dishes. In just a few hours, I had most of them tackled. By then I was pretty exhausted.

Tonight, my parents and I went to Taverna Nikos for dinner. I had shrimp with spinach fettucine and spinach leaves in a lovely cream sauce. The shrimp were just perfect. For dessert, I had a bowl of rice pudding. D was our waiter and he commisterated with us on the election results.