Thanksgiving Holiday Plans

Yesterday was a little better. Mark and I met for lunch at Mogul's, a local Indian buffet. I love that place so much, and I can't afford to eat there every day, and that makes me sad.

Things are steaming along for Thanksgiving and Christmas. I bought the turkey last night for $0.25/per pound at HEB. I had to spend another $20 on groceries; I had done NO Thanksgiving shopping, so that wasn't a problem. I picked up green beans, cream of mushroom soup, fried onions, Greek yogurt, the cheapest real chocolate chips they had, V8 juice (I'm going to make tomato basil bread), unbleached all-purpose flour, and a bunch of other stuff. All in all, a good haul of groceries. I spent about $30 for the turkey and all the other groceries; the turkey was $4. All in all, I'm satisfied.

We have two vegetarians in our house this year, so the only meat-based food we'll have is the turkey. We will have six other meat eaters, so I have no doubt that the turkey was $4 well spent.

I plan to cook the turkey, try my hand at cranberry sauce yet again (last year was an epic, face-puckering, life-altering FAIL), fresh rolls, something with sweet potatoes and something with butternut squash. Mark's mom is going to make salad and the dressing, Burgundy will make green bean casserole, Julia wants to make the mashed potatoes, and I will also make our three desserts: lemon meringue pie, chocolate chess pie, and buttermilk pie. Finally, I will ask my mom to help me with the gravy. This year we won't serve alcohol at the dinner for a variety of reasons; that's a big shift in our world.

Meanwhile, we're gearing up for Christmas. As I posted before, I'm doing a lot of crafts for Christmas. The neat thing is how excited I am this year versus previous years. I think it's because so much time and love has gone into the gifts this year. Very exciting stuff.

The day after Thanksgiving is traditionally tree-hunting day with a little bit of manic Black Friday shopping thrown in there based on Mark's preference. I don't know if we'll do any shopping or not, although the online Apple store is rumored to be having a big sale. Previous years apparently have been a let-down in terms of the amount of discount, so we'll see.

Our usual plan is to finish cleaning up from  Thanksgiving (while Mark goes out and kills a little bit of a sale), then we pile into the Civic and drive to northwest Houston to the tree farms. We try to find one with a bonfire and cocoa, etc, so we can pretend we don't live in a sweltering tropical hell.

After we pick out the tree together and spend a little time on impulsive fun stuff, we head home, set up the tree, and retire for the evening. Saturday and Sunday are spent piling all the decorations out of the attic, decorating the tree, and being generally festive.

Somewhere in there, we'll print out and sign our letter to friends, Soren will step on it, and we'll mail those early in December. Always assuming I finish writing it. Speaking of, I guess I have work to do.