I’ve thought for years that Thanksgiving/Black Friday has organically morphed into a Holiday that is a perfect snapshot of America: we eat too much food, then waddle out and spend too much money.
Eat till you pop then shop till you drop.
That’s a Grinchy way of looking at it.
Thanksgiving is a blast. We love it!
Katie and Josie have a tradition where they get together the night before Thanksgiving to bake something they’ve never made before to bring along to the Pivec dinner. This year, they made a pumpkin carrot pineapple cake with cream cheese frosting encrusted with crushed walnuts.
They brought all the fixin’s to my house. I was hoping BoopityBoop would join us but Katie came straight from work and Adam didn’t feel like driving 25 miles through the heart of downtown during rush hour traffic with two hungry babies. Huh.
We managed to have a fun time anyway.
The girls had to wing a few things because they’d bet on me having certain items I did not have. Like round cake pans. I’ve never made a layer cake in my life; I don’t have round cake pans! So they used Josie’s one round pan and a small square pan I use for sweet rolls. They were going to trim off the corners to make it fit. We’ll never know if that would have worked since Katie broke the cake while attempting to get it out of the pan. Josie had tipped the round layer out and put it on the cooling rack (actually the rack out of my roaster. I told you I’ve never made a layer cake in my life; I don’t own a cooling rack!) without any trouble but Katie botched it. I don’t really know how; probably just her tiny little hands were too small to brace the cake. We all stood there, staring horrified at the huge chunks of hot cake all over the counter, wondering what to do.
“I need a bowl!” Katie declared. I got her one. She dumped all the hot chunks in the bowl and crumbled them up, then added a couple spoons of the frosting Josie had mixed up while the cakes baked along with a quarter cup of coconut to act as a binder. Then she squashed it all back into the round cake pan and stuck it in the still hot oven for five minutes.
It worked! The cake-popped layer held together as they layered the cake and frosted the whole thing, then added the crushed walnuts. It looked beautiful.
We’ve never had Thanksgiving dinner at our own house but since we love the leftovers, we always cook a small turkey anyway. For 20 years, Jay’s team played on the road the night before so he got into the habit of putting the bird in the oven when he got home. We wake up on Thanksgiving morning to the smell of perfectly roasted turkey. It’s been seven years since he’s had a game the night before so now he just gets up in the wee hours to put the bird in the oven.
Watching the near disaster with the cake must have been emotionally exhausting for me because I slept rather late on Thanksgiving morning. When I did get up, not only did the house smell of delicious roast turkey; they bird had been carved and put away and the kitchen was clean.
For every man who has ever wondered: THAT is what women want.
I made cranberry sauce.
Josie came over around noon. She ran upstairs to do her makeup in the bathroom that was all hers until September (now it’s all mine!) and came running back down, screaming.
There was a dead bat in the toilet.
!!!
This is the second time she’s made that disturbing discovery up there. Years ago, she got up one morning, stumbled into her bathroom and saw the large, brown shape in the bowl and thought “Zaaaaack, you come up to my bathroom to do that and don’t even fluuush???” when it moved and she realized that her brother had nothing to do with the mess in the toilet. By the time I got upstairs to remove the poor thing, it had drowned.
This time, it had clearly drowned hours ago. Poor little thing was all folded up, looking sound asleep beneath the water. I think they must have swooped in, looking for a drink of water and gotten stuck; there’s no way to get any purchase on a smooth, porcelain bowl so once in, they couldn’t get out.
Despite their evil looks, bats are not bad animals. They eat mosquitos. Still: I didn’t want to have to deal with that on Thanksgiving! I had to decide which pair of tongs I was ready to replace, then fish the body out of the bowl. Yuck.
Later, Josie and I packed the van with the food and beverages we were bringing to our two dinners. Jay and Zack would follow us when the game they were watching was over.
First stop: the home of my brother who would be hosting that whole side of the family later on.
No one was home; they were all at his mother in law’s house having their first dinner with that part of the family. Josie and I left everything on the front stoop and Josie texted the info to Andy as we got into the car. Twenty minutes later, Andy texted me a picture of what the squirrels had done to the Tupperware full of cookies in the few minutes between me dropping them off and him arriving home. They destroyed the lid but he chased them off before they could get at the cookies. Good thing he got home when he did; five more minutes and a whole batch of Devil Cookies would have been squirrel food!
I’m pleased to say that the rest of the day passed without any more critter attacks.
The whole Pivec crowd was dressed in Viking’s purple, cheering the team on. No one showed any interest in food until the game was over.
Katie and Adam, who had taken BoopityBoop to Wisconsin to spend the Holiday with that part of the family, texted a photo to the gang. It elicited many pained howls.
The Vikings won and dinner was served. Ooh, was it good. Turkey, ham, potatoes, yams, jello, cranberries, green bean casserole, macaroni and cheese, cranberry bread and more that I can’t even remember.
In addition to the pumpkin popped cake that Josie brought, there were the traditional pies, a whole batch of homemade ginger snaps and a cookie birthday cake for a niece whose lucky day it was.
As for that ill-fated pumpkin cake that Josie and Katie made; it was declared one of the top three cakes of all time. Katie’s fix worked like a charm and under the cream cheese frosting, you couldn’t tell that the bottom layer was different from the top and it was all delicious.
Before we slipped into a food induced coma, we packed up our caravan and headed off to my brother’s house. We got there just as the dinner was being served. Thank goodness we didn’t miss anything.
Second dinner is more about tasting the dishes that are a little different from first dinner. There were a few salads and dressings that were completely different. I didn’t have any more turkey, ham or green bean casserole but I definitely filled all the corners. As always, it was fun to see everyone.
We got back home around 9:00. Josie spent the night so she and I watched two episodes of Firefly before our eyes rolled back in our heads and the day was over.
It was a terrific Thanksgiving.