Thanksgiving dinner #1 eaten last night. I took this morning off for an eyedoctor’s appointment and am working from home this afternoon. So far, at one part of the day or another I have: had my checkup. decided to have a tomato-and-bread salad instead of a tossed salad, gone shopping (having intelligently realized that there’s a supermarket right near the doctor’s office *and* it’s in an expat-heavy neighborhood so was likely to have the sour cream I wanted), made applesauce, made brownies, read email, had a telecon, discussed methods to report certain issues, made failed bread (mix and breadmaker, not by hand – apparently the mix was too old, because it didn’t rise at all), bought bread and cut it up to dry for the salad, and got kasha and bowties started.
Somewhere after I bought the tomatoes I realized that the people who are coming over tomorrow were at our party last summer, which means they’ve already had my tomato-and-bread salad as well as my kasha varnishkes. Oops. But it was months ago, and I did drag out some of my holiday standards for the party. Anyway, they haven’t had my turkey, or my mashed potatoes made with cheese and sour cream, and no one has had the asparagus tossed with orange zest I’m planning (based on a recipe I saw on line for green beans almondine which included lemon zest, and on the fact that I have oranges but not lemons and the asparagus looked more appealing than the beans at the store this morning.) These are the same people who had me over last night, so hopefully they’ll bring some of their leftover pie (pumpkin/pecan (yes, together) or cheesecake), and we’ll send them home with some turkey gravy because they couldn’t find an uncooked turkey, bought the same precooked kind we had last year (not bad, really) and didn’t like the gravy that came with it. Expats need to stick together!
Now I need to finish the kasha and bows, then it’s off to turkey dinner #2, which is at a restaurant.
(If you haven’t been keeping up, someone invited us to the restaurant dinner but Ted’s still away so we’re having our own dinner tomorrow – the only full day we’re both home between business trips. Then the other Americans we’re having over tomorrow invited me to their dinner yesterday. See: expats sticking together, above.)