Thanksgiving Tales
For our second Thanksgiving without immediate family to be obligated to go to, we went to friends for a fancy dinner. Gerard and Tim are a retired airline flight attendant and an episcopal priest, respectively; they live the kind of life I sometimes aspire to. It was a lovely dinner! All the other guests were episcopal priests, which made for some lively dinner conversation! Once I relaxed, anyway!
The evening ended rather abruptly when one of our hosts' dogs became quite distressed - it was having an episode of apparent torsion, or twisting of the stomach - and needed to be rushed to the hospital right away. Fortunately the medical emergency resolved itself without surgery, but it really seemed touch-and-go there for a while. Very glad it turned out OK.
The day after, we resurrected what was a long-standing tradition - Alternate Thanksgiving. Since all my friends are normally with their families for REAL Thanksgiving, I always used to throw a separate party the day after. We' did it for years, though we skip now and then. Last year, for example, we were in Seattle for Thanksgiving. The evening didn't turn out quite as expected (a bunch of people cancelled) but there were still 12 of us and too much food! We served baked Brie two ways (one mince and one with cranberry orange relish), Paella with chicken and shellfish (there were TWO of them!) home made bread, buckwheat with bow tie pasta (known to the Jewish as "kasha varnishkes") and roasted root vegetables, and ALL THE DESSERT. It was also a mini high school reunion of sorts, with most of my old gang together for the first time in like 20 years. It was very nice!
We all fit in one room! It was tight but it worked!
In the wake of this, Clay (who did basically all the cooking) said, "I'm never cooking this again." I'm hoping he meant TWO PAELLAS AT ONCE.
It was a lovely evening filled with old friends and new! Also a fitting cap on a lovely week off work. It took most of Saturday and Sunday to recover and clean up! Back to work tomorrow!