Happy Thanksgiving!!

Over the years, I've ruined my fair share of meals. The most riveting of which was probably the one where I made pork chops with scalloped potatoes for my in-laws, only to find out that the pork chops I got were far thicker than the usual ones, and our oven was on the fritz. The meal, which took hours instead of 40 minutes (or so it felt) had to be saved by a few sneaky tricks, none of which came from my obviously limited arsenal of know-how.

Some thrive on stress. I am not one of those some.

Hence, I've learned a couple of things about me and the kitchen.

• I am not to make a meal or any portion thereof for the first time in a stressful situation.
  
• I am not to over-complicate the menu. One complicated thing maybe, but no more.
  
• I am not to over-commit myself to cooking more than I can handle without stressing out MetaDaddy.
  
• If I'm not enjoying my kitchen labor to some degree, everyone will suffer.

So, as Thanksgiving comes to a close, I would like to say I did none of that. Mostly because we ate out with some friends. It was stressful on other levels. MetaBaby, who napped and ate well, is still but a toddler, and as such, short on patience. MetaDaddy took the brunt of the force by holding and walking with him a lot. It turns out, he ate lots of turkey when he got a moment, but forgot to savor in any vegetables. Don't worry...the feast was grand, so he got plenty. He just didn't get as much of the green beans and mashed potato as he would have liked. *le sigh*

On the bright side, we got to take home some leftovers, so we're having turkey sandwiches tomorrow. Yet, we don't have 15 pounds of leftover turkey in the fridge. Whew!! And I didn't go nuts arranging the whole thing. That said, if we had done it at home, I would have ordered part of the meal so the ordeal would have been kept to a minimum. As a compromise, that's probably what we'll do next year. After all, we might have some turkey left over, but no cranberry sauce or pumpkin pie. And that's just sad.

And now for something completely different: A Psychedelic Thanksgiving

Hope you all had a wonderful holiday, and good luck with all of your Black Friday endeavors ;-)