Well, There's Another One Under the Belt

At least we weren't the only ones with disasters. My aunt and uncle had ordered Thanksgiving dinner from Wegmans. Last year, they did a bang-up job and all the food arrived needing only a minimal re-heating and everything was delicious. This year the food arrived....ice cold. The turkey needed cooking for 2 hours. The veggies were icy cold. The gravy was a congealed lump in a plastic container.

My uncle was not happy.

So we opened the wine, and stuck the turkey in the oven and generally made merry and then, thanks to a turkey that one of my cousins had cooked and sliced up earlier, we loaded plates with slices of warm turkey and cold veggies and stood in line at the microwave. So we didn't end up all eating together, as the first people were about ready for seconds when the last people were still waiting for microwave time. But it was tasty and we were all together. This will be my aunt and uncle's last Thanksgiving in their house as they are moving, at the beginning of 2008 into a retirement community/assisted living cottage. It's feeling very end-of-an-era here in my head. When I was little, we'd all get together at my grandparents. Oh, I know it wasn't every holiday, though it feels like it. And my grandmother and mom and her sisters would cook a huge and delicious dinner and clean up afterwards and the men would sit around and talk and the kids would all be underfoot. My mom and grandmother and aunts all seemed so happy, working together, laughing and carrying on.

I don't think I'll ever feel that grown-up.

My cousin Mary Linn was up from Virginia (and her niece Amy flew in from Chicago...sure was nice to see her again) and ML brought along a slide projector and boxes of slides that her parents had taken all over the world. Her dad, my Uncle John, was in the Army...they lived in Germany, Japan, Thailand. My Aunt Lois took most of the pictures and she had a very good eye. It's amazing how beautiful the colors still were in these slides, some of which were from the late 1950's. And my aunt looked so lovely. There were also pictures from a trip that my mom, my Aunt Lois, ML and I took in the early 70's to England. Fun to see.

Oh....and the cake this morning. Another disaster. It cooked up...the oven temp was a little off but I adjusted. And then, when I went to turn it out of the pan...the pan that I had sprayed so heavily with Baker's Joy that little alpine skiers could have slalomed down the sides...that pan...the cake came out, leaving huge chunks of itself behind. I almost threw the whole damn thing out the window. The unopened window.

Fortunately, the brownies were delicious.

Oh, and there's a new chevron scarf in town.


Rachel says it looks like someone's insides. Seems a little harsh to me.