It is Sunday, November 30 and there are only 25 days until Christmas!  I know!  Where has the time gone?  It seems like only 340 days ago it was Christmas and here we are with less than a month to go until it is here again.  And yes, for those of you who are wondering, the lovely Elaine is finally allowing me to play Christmas music.  Today we remember the birthdays of Andrea Doria, Samuel Clemons and Abbie Hoffman.  On this day in 1782, Great Britain signed the agreement recognizing US independence, in 1907 Pike Place Market was dedicated in Seattle and in 1954 the first meteorite (8 lbs) known to strike a person hit Liz Hodges of Sylacauga, AL.  In Barbados it is Independence Day, in the Philippines it is Bonifacio Day/Heroes’ Day and in Massachusetts it is John F Kennedy Day.

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving.  We did!  The kids came up and brought their new puppy.  She, Chloe, is a cutie and was well behaved.  She is only around 9 or 10 weeks old and has learned quite a bit under the tutelage of my daughter-in-law.  The lovely Elaine claims it is because Chloe is a girl.  I don’t necessarily subscribe to that theory, but she seems to be learning things faster than the boy dogs they have had.  But I digress …

Anyway, we had turkey, green beans, corn, mashed and sweet potatoes, dressing and gravy and, at the request of my younger grandson, we also had steamed broccoli.  For those of you who are interested, there is a difference between stuffing and dressing.  Stuffing is cooked inside the turkey, while dressing is cooked separately.  We started defrosting our turkey back on Halloween and by Wednesday night it was almost ready.  Yes, I got the parts out, including the bag they hide in the bird.  

We started cooking it early Thursday morning and it was ready only about 40 minutes after we had planned to eat.  We are getting better at this meal, after all these years.  I still need to learn the proper way to carve the turkey.  I get the meat off the turkey and on platters, but it looks more like one of the bodies from the chainsaw massacre movies than it does the ones you see in the commercials and cookbooks.  I suppose it doesn’t matter, as long as the meat gets to the table, but I will never be able to have a Norman Rockwell type photo of me bringing the turkey to the table.

Of course, I’m not sure I want the turkey brought to the table.  First, there would not be much room, so I do not know where I would put it.  Second would be the problem with all the juice running out of it.  We would probably need a drop cloth under the table and everyone would have to wear a pancho to stay dry.  Not an attractive holiday image.  I guess I will just continue to hack the bird up and throw the meat on platters.

After consuming the main course, the table was cleared and everyone adjourned to the living room, where the seating was softer.  I got the coffee going and started putting out the dessert items.  We had pumpkin pie, pumpkin cheese pie, apple pie, Tassies, chocolate cake, figs and candy.  The desserts took up as much table space as the meal.  One side note that some might find amusing (I did not) came when I was baking the pumpkin cheese pie.  The time came to mix the ricotta cheese into the pumpkin and I had about ¾ of the container in with the pumpkin when I realized I was putting in sour cream and not the cheese.

I proudly exhibited my ability to swear , loudly, and then dumped it all in the trash.  It was Wednesday afternoon and I now had to run to the store to get more pumpkin pie filling so that I could make the pie.  I also had to get a replacement for the sour cream.  It was fortunate for the people in the store that I had a few minutes by myself in the car.  That gave me the time needed to finish venting.  When I got to the store, I relatively calmly got what I needed and went home.  I was very careful to make sure I was using the ricotta cheese the second time.  The worst part of the whole thing was that there was nothing to blame this on.  I made the mistake.  I was not paying attention.  There were no mislabeled containers, no errors in the recipe, no one else to blame – I made the mistake.  Mark this day because I do not usually admit to stupidity.  Usually there is a way to push the blame off on someone or something else.  

Moving quickly along, I want to spend some time discussing Black Friday.  There was an article in our paper the other day, talking about some people who were camped out in a parking lot, since Tuesday, so that they could be first in line when the store opened on Thursday evening.  One of the people would not let the paper use his name because he was supposed to be at work.  Are the deals really so good that you would jeopardize your job to be first in line?  Do you dislike turkey and your family so much that you would rather camp out in a parking lot for several days?

They claim that you can get better deals by waiting until Cyber Monday and shopping on line for what you need.  Many places do not charge for shipping, depending on the size of the order.  But even if you have to pay for shipping, it has to be better than spending those nights camping (especially Wednesday during the storm) and taking the chance of losing your job.  Even better, you could wait a week or two and the deals will start so that merchants can get rid of their stock.  And there is far less chance of being trampled at 6 AM by people rushing to get one of the three items in the store that everyone wants.  I’m just saying …

This week our fact tells us that Donald Duck comics were banned in Finland because he didn’t wear pants.  They apparently didn’t have a problem with the fact that Daisy didn’t wear a skirt.  They also didn’t have an issue with Donald raising his three nephews (am I the only one who wonders where their parents are?).  Their only problem was with his lack of pants.  Maybe a family will buy jeans for him like that family in the stupid Pillsbury commercial bought for the dough boy.

By the way, Thanksgiving is over so don’t forget to button your pants.