Thanksgiving 2011

As I type this, I'm enjoying the quiet of the day after Thanksgiving.  It is early morning and the sun is just coming up.  However, millions of Americans are shopping on "Black Friday" hoping to get some good deals.  No Black Friday shopping day for me.  I hate shopping where there are crowds of people.  Today I plan to do some cleaning and organizing in our laundry/storage area in the basement.

Yesterday was Thanksgiving, so I was busy cooking a somewhat traditional dinner for guests from Viet Nam and Korea.  Gahee and some of her friends were invited to the home of one of her friend's relatives who lives in Springfield, Missouri, so she wasn't with us.  However, her friend, Bora, who is also a student in one of my classes joined Vy, Anh and their guests.  Unfortunately, George spent the day in bed suffering with a kidney stone situation.  He has dealt with this before and Anh suggested he drink pineapple juice regularly.

So the students and I had dinner, and then we went for a walk.  After the walk, we came back and had desserts:  blueberry cheesecake that Trang brought, some fresh fruit, some pumpkin pie, and some homemade gingersnap cookies.

Here's my pumpkin pie story:  I love homemade pies and I love to make them, so yesterday I was making a homemade pumpkin pie when my son-in-law called to see if I would be home.  He had company for the holiday, they were baking, and voila! - he brought over another pumpkin pie.  Great!   About a hour after the second pie arrived, my doorbell rang.  It was my neighbor, Bob.  He said, "Here's your newspaper...and here's a pumpkin pie I know your gal enjoys."  He refers to Gahee as "your gal."    So I ended up with three pumpkin pies.  We'll have to do some extra walking to work off all the desserts!!

Enjoy some photos of the day:

You can't really get an idea of the dimensions of our tiny kitchen, but this is what it typically looks like whenever anybody is doing some cooking.  Our old condo is large, but the kitchen is quite small....and crowded!

This is most of the working area I had to make the different items for the Thanksgiving dinner.  I made some items the day before.  It's very limited space, by American standards, but it worked...as long as I kept cleaning up the area as I prepared different things.

               The Turkey!  I also had some boneless pork ribs cooking in the slow cooker because not everyone likes turkey.

         Vy took a picture of me as I tried to carve the turkey.  It's something I hate doing because I'm not very good at it and I usually end up wrestling bird to get the meat off the bone.  Fortunately, she was there to help out and keep me calm.

                          The group - after enjoying some dessert.