No Leftovers!

But no mess either. I'm more excited about the latter than the former; I like having leftovers! This year, my middle son and his girlfriend hosted Thanksgiving dinner. It was their first time, and we all made a big deal of it. His girlfriend's sister was visiting from out of town, and several months ago I had mentioned that I might take a little trip at Thanksgiving time since I'd be off work most of the week. I ended up not traveling (no regrets about that -- it's the worst time to travel) but they had already planned to have the meal at their house, so we all just stuck with that plan.

I had the worst headache when I got there, probably from cooking in a hot house for about six hours before we left (my youngest son got into town last night, so we went over together). Earlier this week, I had the heat on for the first time this season. Today I had to turn on the air conditioner, and it was taking a while to cool the house down with the oven on. Even as I type this, at almost nine at night, it's about seventy degrees outside. Anyway, I had brought some Coronas over, and since I'd already fulfilled my cooking duties and brought over the fruits of my labor, I decided to relax with a beer (or three) on the back porch. It was so nice. We had all three dogs running around, the kids' friends were dropping in and out, and I got to spend time with some of my favorite people. Eventually my headache faded away. The beer probably helped, and I stopped early enough -- both time-wise and quantity-wise -- that I won't have a headache from that tomorrow.

As I think back through the years, I can remember only one time when I didn't have leftovers, or at least easy access to them. Of course, when I was young, my grandmother always made way too much food, and we'd enjoy turkey and stuffing (my favorite), as well as pies and cakes and whatever else she had cooked for days afterwards. When I began hosting my own Thanksgivings -- including a few at my mom's house after my grandmother died -- I followed in the tradition of cooking way too much food. With three sons, we didn't always have a lot of leftovers, but we did always have some. At least the smell of pies is lingering in my house; I baked an apple pie and a pumpkin pie to take over. I also took a turkey (my son and his girlfriend are vegetarians, but the rest of us wanted turkey), two pounds of stuffing from Earth Fare, and my famous cranberry relish. And twelve Coronas. We managed to get all of that across town with two dogs in the car! Now that I'm back home, I'm really craving some stuffing . . .