Left Overs and Yet to Haves

I could be wrong. I have been before, I've been told. But I think... I think (in fact, I'm pretty sure) that this was my first Thanksgiving away from home -- "home" being where my mother bastes a turkey, mashes potatoes, and bakes fantastic homemade rolls. Because I am in San Diego, I was unable to pop over to the homestead for a munch on the well-familiar goodies that have marked each year of my life thus far. And it's just as well. It turns out that this year my mother didn't host Thanksgiving dinner at all. She visited my brother's home, which became the holiday hub for the families of my brother and his wife. It was one-stop shopping for the kids, I guess, and a little break (or, at least, a lot of help) for the grandmothers. Good for everyone. But if this is the beginning of a new tradition, with my brother deep-frying a turkey in his driveway, then I've seen the last of the only family tradition that had thus far survived his marriages and procreation. Change is good, I hear; but as life keeps moving on without me, I suppose it's time to start initiating some changes of my own. As soon as I figure out what they need to be.

In the meantime...

This year, I spent the holiday with Orrick's family, who warmly and kindly welcomed me in. The food was as good and as familiar as if it had come from my own mother's kitchen and I was very thankful not to find an awkward difference. Orrick's mother even made a special (delicious) dessert just for me after overhearing me cry "I love all things pumpkin!" over a CostCo sample days earlier -- a pumpkin sheet cake with cream cheese icing. Though I have since uncovered the recipe, Orrick insists that, after a large chunk of it came home with us, we've had enough cake for a while.

What we did not have, however, were our own holiday leftovers. On Friday, our refrigerator looked like this:

There was no day-after turkey from which to make sandwiches, no stuffing to reheat, no cranberry to crumble, no olives to catch Elwood-style from my brother Jake's pitch....

HOLD ON A MINUTE! Now that I think of it, there were no food-throwing antics at all! EIN MINUTEN BITTE! Whoa, whoa, whoa! Back up! Methinks I've missed a vital holiday move.

Bah.

All in all, it was a nice holiday (made even better with the arrival of puppies!), but I hope that when Dad comes back to California, he's not all turkeyed-out. Because I've got an 11 pound fella in the freezer just waiting for him.

Bwah-hah-hah!