Thanksgiving Success

Since I was a kid, my mom's family normally celebrated Thanksgiving at my grandparents' house in Williamsport, PA; when my cousin and her husband bought the house 6 or 7 years ago the family generally kept the tradition and gathered at that house. However, this year my cousins were out of town, so on my mom's suggestion, I offered to host the meal. It was not a huge crowd. I had only six guests: my grandmother, my aunt, my mom, her boyfriend Armando, my brother Dan and a South Korean grad student I invited through a Thanksgiving Dinner program run by the university. But I'd never cooked a turkey before, and had certainly never prepared so many dishes all at once, so it was a big undertaking for me nonetheless.

My aunt, who is a nurse, had to work on Thursday so we had our dinner on Friday. This gave me most of the day on Thursday to spend cleaning my house. Inexplicably, I decided to spend a good portion of time rearranging my dresser drawers, and another stretch of the day watching a Law & Order marathon on USA. So my free day was spent less efficiently than I might have hoped, but by the time my mom, Armando and Dan arrived the beds were made, toilets scrubbed and welcoming scented candles lit.

Friday's meal was a success. My mom (my co-chef) and I worked out a tight timeline of when to put things in the oven, when to assemble casseroles, etc. After more than five hours straight of slaving away in the kitchen we had a delicious meal. Sure, there were a few snags: we lost track of the timeline in the last half hour or so, and there was some confusion about what dishes needed to come out of the oven at what time, and for some reason the turkey sort of split open and collapsed when we took it out of the roasting pan, leaving it lying in a rather obscene manner sprawled on the cutting board. But this made it easier to carve, and it was delicious. All the dishes came out great, including homemade stuffing and cranberry sauce, both of which I made for the first time.

The rest of the weekend was very relaxed. The guys took care of some projects around my house (visiting Lowe's no less than four times in two days) and in between meals of Thankgsiving leftovers we caught up on episodes of the first season of 30 Rock on DVD. I introduced my mom to the show, and she and now my brother are now converts. If you haven't seen it, you are missing out on the best thing on TV.

I hope you all had a great Thankgsiving, wherever you were and whoever you celebrated with.