Thanksgiving!
There just aren’t that many Thanksgiving songs… but there *IS* a non-zero number of them. The one that I listen to every Thanksgiving is Dan Bern’s Thanksgiving Day Parade:
But, if we want to go all traditional, there’s Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant”:
We’re fixin’ to go to the fam’s and have our Traditional Thanksgiving Pictures for the Christmas, er, “Holiday” card and then follow it up with a Thanksgiving Dinner that couldn’t be beat. We’re bringing the pies and the wine (Beaujolais nouveau, bien sur!) and will then settle in for a lovely day avoiding Black Friday and associateds with everything we can.
The errands can wait a week.
So… what’s on your docket?
(Picture is WID_7919 by Ed Uthman, used under a creative commons license)
although usually it’s a softer
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So these Traditional Thanksgiving Pictures – are they 8×10 color glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one of em?
We’re having a couple of friends in, and tomorrow we are going to a boardgaming party. I anticipate that at some point during this party, I will have the opportunity to start chanting, “kill, kill, KILL!”Report
They involve “okay, the grammas with the grandbabies. Now the parents with the kids. Now this side of the family. Now that side of the family. Wait! We have to take it again! Junior was making a funny face!”
The best part is how each picture has to be taken with each digital camera. No, you can’t email them once you get a perfect shot… you have to recreate it for everybody’s individual camera. At the end of the pictures, the nephews are usually close to tears, the parents have been screaming for the last 20 minutes “JUST SMILE AND QUIT PLAYING GRABASS!”, and the grammas are fuming.
This is why I bring the wine.Report
Plus 10. And thanks.Report
The best holiday family photo we ever took included our youngest making a ridiculous “eyes rolled up into the back of his head” face which nobody caught until the prints came in. It is my most favoritest family photo of all time.Report
Board games on the holidays led to many a fight in my family over the years. Though the real killer was hearts.
I look back at our cut throat hearts Thanksgiving tournaments and wonder that we all still talk to one another.Report
Dane Cook has a funny bit about Monopoly being the source of family squabbles.Report
We had planned on getting some serious boardgaming in after dinner on the day, but a niece decided that getting sick and barfing her guts out was more fun, so one game of Agricola is all we got.Report
Black Friday seems like a good day to stay home to me. Thanks to my very organized wife, much of our Christmas shopping is done already. I know what to get her this year, too!
Today, I am tasked with bird and gravy. My bird is already spatchcocked and brining, and in about an hour, I shall dress it with my herb, butter, and bacon fat rub. (Thanksgiving is not the time for dietary restraint.) Spatchcocked turkeys need only about an hour and a half to roast and half an hour or less to rest before carving and service. Our companions for the holiday feast prefer an early dinner, at 1:00, which to me sounds more like lunch, but I can do this. And since they’re contributing the other fixings, I’m pleased to accomodate them. We’ll bring wine too, although unlike @jaybird , ours will be domestic and Italian whites.
Alsotoo an earlier feast does allow for nibbling and snacking the rest of the day, and free time to watch San Francisco redeem itself against the SeaTurkeys.Report
I still haven’t gotten up the nerve to spatchcock a chicken, let alone a turkey. Maybe I will try chicken next week with my leftover brine.
And yeah, I expect SF to pummel Seattle. 🙁Report
I still haven’t gotten up the nerve to spatchcock a chicken
Rod Dreher is glad to hear that.Report
@tod-kelly
A friend on facebook vowed never to do it again FWIW.Report
I remember one horrible Thanksgiving where I excused myself from the proceedings to “check on the food” only to be found by my *very* conservative Aunt spatchcocking my chicken. Surprisingly, she rolled with it quite well, gracefully even, which surprised me given the level of my shame and her views on birds. We’ve never talked about it since.Report
I can now attest that spatchcocking the turkey produced BEAUTIFUL results. Moist, flavorful, and a perfect golden brown. Everything I could have hoped for.
The Niners-SeaChickens game, not so much.Report
spatchcocking is the only way to (butter)fly when it comes to turkey.Report
Driving home, we went the way that drove us past the Best Buy.
It had a line that went around the building.Report
And what a daynnight to be outside livin the dream of livin the dream. It’s an Event, man.Report
If my time were worth 10 bucks an hour, I’d have to save 120 bucks on whatever doorbuster I bought just to break even if I got in line right now and the doors opened at 4AM.
Whether or not that is particularly likely, I dunno, but I *DO* know that I hold my time in higher esteem than that.Report
You’re so much smarter than those idiots….Report
Not necessarily. I might just esteem myself more highly.Report
Not necessarily. I might just esteem myself more highly.
Just like all those public union folks, no?Report
There are things you do to yourself and then there are the costs that you impose on third parties.Report
(Or, for our friends north of the 49th, “flavourful.” Ordinary Times apologizes for any confusion.Report
Off to the daughter’s in a bit for Thanksgiving, birthdays, and time with the granddaughter (can she really be 15 months old already?). My son and I have the same birthday, and it falls around Thanksgiving, so years ago we just combined them all. Chocolate cake has become a “traditional” Thanksgiving dessert in our family :^)Report
That’s wonderful – what a birthday present!Report
Awesome.Report
LeeEsq and I are in L.A. to visit our new niece. Our older brother and sister-in-law live down here. This is my first Thanksgiving in a warm climate. I am sure seeing Santa in shorts will give me a freak out. I am still perplexed by snow decorations in San Francisco during the Holidays (it seems odd to brag about your temperate weather and then put up snow decorations during the Holidays).
Today I will be spending the day at my brother’s house. Tomorrow we will probably go to LAMOCA because I want to and have never been.Report
Really? Whatcha doing after? Can I buy you guys a drink, or will family obligations get in the way?Report
I sent you an e-mail.Report
This will be the first year I’ve ever done multiple Thanksgivings.
Tonight we will have dear friends over to have a commingled Thanksgiving dinner, where we will have both turkey and a freshly smoked ham (out on the Big Green Egg at this very moment, actually). The only bad thing is that the family coming over insisted on bringing the roast turkey with them. (Who does that?) Fortunately, we found out we had a few other friends who will be in town tomorrow who for different reasons will not be able to do the big feast tonights, so we will have a second Thanksgiving then and I will be able to do turkey, stuffing and gravy my way… and get leftovers afterwards.
This year I am dry-brining the bird at the recommendation of my sister. I resisted for a while, since dry-brining seems against the laws of God, but I’ve given in. We’ll see how it goes.
But the best news of the weekend is that our oldest boy is home from college! It’s my first experience ever of a kid coming home to celebrate a holiday, and it’s freaking space awesome.Report
We are newly empty nested here at the Leveller household, and let me tell you, adding 2 to the dinner table who have done something other than work all day really makes the discussion a bit more lively. Now I know how the father of the prodigal son felt.Report
Sitting across the table from the cousin-in-law whom I’ve done my best to avoid for the past quarter-century, when he switches from mocking health food nuts to talking about this new water additive that changes the chemistry of water, making it more alkaline so that it’s healthier for you. No sense of irony at all.Report
He’s lyeing.Report
MD listening party tomorrow! Friend’s 50th party Saturday (though I’m not sure how excited I can get for an adult birthday party. The curmudgeon in me says, “Isn’t that something kids do?”). Playing a little bass in church on Sunday, then keenly watching the fantasy FB board to see how the battle with the Analysts is going. Wish I had paid more attention to the TE position. Leaving Olsen on the bench in favor of Witten was NOT a smart move.Report
A somewhat more, shall we say, tough love infused Thanksgiving song, released yesterday by A Tribe Called Red.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnGnj_e6gBwReport