Thanksgiving Day

Although we did not get to bed until 4:am, we were up again at 8:am to make food for Thanksgiving dinner. Because my sister insists on going to both our Thanksgiving dinner and another with her in-laws, we had decided to do an early dinner so that she could make it to both.

So, I dragged my butt out of bed, got a couple of pie crusts going and then made breakfast for everyone. Then I started some dinner rolls and finished the pies so that I could get them in the oven. Only after a load of dishes, did I have time to check my messages and e-mail. Apparently, last night, while we were driving, my sister informed us that her in-laws dinner was earlier than she had expected and wanted to change our dinner to a late dinner. Basically, I could have gotten 2 or 3 hours more sleep.

Being already tired and sleep deprived, I was not too thrilled at the last minute change in plans, but as I was already up and going, I finished my cooking chores. I shaped the bread rolls, boiled potatoes, roasted garlic and baked the rolls. Then we sat around for an hour here and there, whipped some heavy cream and we were off to my brother's house for dinner.

He made the turkey and a bunch of appetizers. My mom did the ham and sticky rice. My sister was late to our late dinner and she had all the vegetables.

Finally, everyone arrived (except for my dad who decided to go to sleep for the night before the dinner). We had dinner but I don't think that we even managed to eat half of the food. I think we ate too many of the appetizers before dinner since dinner was so late and we were hungry. My sister's family had already eaten for the most part so there was a lot of leftovers. I took some home and didn't have to really cook the next day at all. I think my brother ended up using leftovers for the rest of the week! I think we could have fed another family...or two and still had some food left!

After dessert, my sister's husband took off with her two boys and my mom took dinner back to my dad.

My brother had this super neat experiment for us to try. He is growing Synsepalum dulcificum (aka miracle fruit). I had never heard of it, but apparently it makes anything that tastes sour, taste sweet. So, we all got one tiny little fruit. What you do is, eat the fruit and then swirl the seed around in your mouth, all around your tongue. And for about 20 minutes or so, everything we tasted was so sweet! The fruit itself is quite tasty but they are smaller than a grape. We tried all kinds of other fruit, some more exotic than others. It was so fun! Slices of lemon tasted like lemonade. Out of season strawberries tasted like the best strawberries you have had at the peak of the summer season. It was really bizarre. We tasted some fresh pomegranate juice that my sister brought and although we had a bunch with dinner that was really good, after the miracle fruit, it just tasted cloyingly sweet. Apparently, you need some of the tartness for balance.

Anyway, it was really interesting and loads of fun. Pretty soon, we found that it was nearly midnight and had to bid everyone a goodnight. Time to head home and try to catch up on lost sleep. It used to be so much easier when we were young. Growing old kind of sucks.