Thanksgiving Blessings and Traditions

We decorate the house, inside and out, lightly for Halloween, emphasizing harvet and autumn, but we did have a few a few cute Halloween kittens and a silly witch or two. I've already taken those down (kitties and cackling women), but left all harvest things  up.

To this I add ceramic pilgrims I've collected over the years. This year I picked up a lovely wooden carved harvest angel with a prayer inscribed on her skirt, which I put on my baker's rack.

I have a special turkey recipe I make every year that DH looks forward to.

Wishing all at Steeple Hill and Harlequin a blessed Thanksgiving. :) :) :) 

Nike, it sounds wonderful! What do you do special for your turkey? My turkey isn't usually too good, so I'd love advice! :)

Margaret, now you've got me craving it. :)

 You know, I get a craving about this time every year. Once I broke down and baked a turkey. Then no one wanted it when the holiday got here! :) So I've learned to resist.

My favorite part about Thanksgiving is eating big pieces of pie.  : )

Jillian

My BIL eats his first because it's his favorite part. I find that, even though I try to pace myself with the meal, I end up having to wait a couple of hours before diving in to the pie. :)

What kind of pie does everyone like? At our house, we do a variety: pumpkin (because who can do Thanksgiving without a pumpkin pie), cherry (hubby's fave), pecan (a close second for hubby), apple, and usually something else to be creative. I like variety. Really, the reason we do apple is because it's soooo good for breakfast the next morning.

Dream

I love Thanksgiving because I get to watch football while enjoying a nice dinner with my family. Last year was the first year I pretty much made Thanksgiving dinner on my own. It was a good learning experience. Now I know what to do and not to do lol I love pumpkin pie! I bake my own from scratch. I also make a chocolate pie for my brother since he is not a fan of pumpkin. I get two Thanksgivings because the next day all the family gets together at my grandparents for another Thanksgiving dinner.

Missy--isn't pie great for dinner?  : )

Dream--my faves are lemon and chocolate cream.

Nicole, I did the whole meal myself two years ago. I was so tired I could hardly eat! I'll have to learn to ask for help next time. Or cut back some. :)

 Nancy, we love the parades, too! And then it gets switched to football about the time I'm ready to take a nice long nap. <g>

Nancy, that's my routine. I have a village, too.

Missy, I will bake a turkey through the year.

Jillian, I LOVE pecan pie.

Margaret 

Since Dream asked me to write about my family’s Thanksgiving traditions, here it is. : )

I grew up in rural Washington State in a small farming community east of Seattle and tucked in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains.  I remember our lights going out for most of my Thanksgivings while I was growing up. We didn't get severe weather often, but for some unexplained reason we nearly always got a major storm on Thanksgiving Day.   Once, when we actually didn't have a storm, a driver ran off the road and into a power pole ten yards from our driveway--no injuries but yes, the power was out. We lived off the beaten path, which meant that when disaster hit and the utility lines went down, we weren't exactly at the top of the power company's fix-it list.  We spent many turkey days in the dark.  But did we go hungry? 

Not a chance.  It became a joke in my family.  We were serious about our food, so instead of being caught with nothing good to eat we went proactive.  The day before the holiday and with an eye on the weather, I would help my mom in the kitchen with cookies, cinnamon buns, pies, baked beans and her homemade dinner rolls.  Mom would have the turkey ready for the oven so we could get it cooking very early on Thanksgiving morning--usually before four am--to beat the anticipated power outage.  

The lights always went out around 10 or 11 just about the time the turkey came out of the oven perfectly moist and fragrant.  My dad would bring in an armful of wood for the fireplace and the woodstove.   I would light candles, and my little brother would set the table.  Any food that wasn't ready we would finish cooking on the top of the woodstove--the sweet potatoes, the green beans, and we would even warm the rolls wrapped in tin foil.  It almost felt like Thanksgiving in another century.  We could have been pioneers dishing up a holiday meal in our shanty.  We ate by candlelight, kept warm by the fire and told stories until our sides ached from laughing.  The power would inevitably come on later in the day--usually near bedtime when we had already eaten our supper and washed the worst of the dishes with water heated on the stove.

Times have changed.  I live on the beaten path in a city, and the power has never gone out in my house on Thanksgiving.  I don't have a woodstove and I don't need to eat Thanksgiving dinner by candlelight--only by choice.  As wonderful as the holiday is, it always seems like some adventure is missing.  My Thanksgivings these days are tame by comparison! 

It's funny the things you remember.  The memory that stands out the most for me was that our family got out all of the good things.  The good dinner plates, the good lace table cloth, we pulled the good oak table away from it's display spot where its leaves were down and it held decorations to the center of the room to use for our meal.  As a child it was unusual to me to make such a big deal out of a meal.  I didn't understand why we didn't just eat at the little table in the kitchen as we always did, or why we couldn't just eat on the regular plates.  It was that I didn't like the extra effort; I just didn't see why the adults made such a fuss when I would have liked everything just as well the way we always did it.  It wasn't until I got older that I finally got it.  Each piece, the tablecloth, the plates, the table, all of it came together to create a memory, to preserve a tradition that had been handed down, to show how special each of us were to our family.  It was all a gift, a gift of love that we could count among our blessings that day.  I find now that the details in so many things are important to me.  I love to decorate gifts with special touches, write something special for each person in every card I send, not just sign my name (although I don't mind getting those cards either, so no offense to anyone that isn't into writing messages :), but it's what I experienced as a child that made me want to do those little extra touches and I am thankful for that.  I know my family loves all the little details that I put into celebrations and everyday, and I hope I am passing it down to my child, and creating wonderful memories for her as well.

I am also thankful for my daughter, husband, sister and mother, my health, hubby's job, our home, for the Lord Jesus Christ being mySavior, so many things....

I wonder if your trip back in time has anything to do with the fact that you write historicals? You certainly got a taste of it growing up. :)

Dream--you're right.  I was like one of my historical heroines for a day.   : )

Given that it's Veterans Day, I thought this would be appropriate.

Nineteen years ago, I was a private in the army, and I was deployed to the Persian Gulf for Desert Shield.  We'd been in Saudi Arabia only about a month, and already the routine was wearing us down.  Every day, each meal was the same--the menu didn't vary much.

Then we received the announcement that President Bush was coming to speak to the troops.  The company couldn't send everyone, so they picked a few people from each platoon.  I got picked from mine--my squad leader told me I was the only he trusted not to get stupid if I had an opportunity to meet the President.  He didn't even trust himself not to!

We were bussed up to the Royal Saudi Air Force Base for the speech.  We had to stand in a very long line and go through a metal detector.  Any bags we carried were searched.  The most striking thing I remember seeing was the Air Force One plane parked on the runway.  There were so many people there that the President seemed like an ant in the distance.  Dennis, who had come with me from one of the other platoons, managed to work his way through the crowds and was able to shake Bush's hand.

After the speech, we were treated to a fantastic Thanksgiving dinner.  It was like being a kid in a candy store.  Everything was on a huge table in the center of the mess tent, and we could just help ourselves.  They'd even scattered Mars bars on the table (a much coveted delicacy).  Then it was back to business as usual, but it was a great day.

What an incredible memory.  I'm just in awe.  Thank you for your service. : )

Jessiecue--I forgot about the shopping!!  Although these days I hit the internet.  Great sales on Black Friday.

Hello. Pat Davids here.

I couldn't pass up a chance to tell the story about the time I nearly ruined my family's holiday dinner. I had been away from home for about two years and in that time my parents remodeled the kitchen with a new state of the art stove (for 1972) My old bedroom had been given over to my brother's girlfriend for the holiday and I was sleeping on the sofa. Eveyone went to bed. Some time around four a.m., my mother got up to put the turkey in and then went back to bed. When she turned off the kitchen light, a strange glow filled the kitchen and shone in my face where I was not quite sleeping on the sofa. The oven light was on.

I got up to turn it off, but it was a new stove. I searched and searched for the stupid switch, turning every knob on that brand new stove without finding it. Finally, in frustration, I hung a towel over the oven window and went back to almost sleeping on the sofa. The next morning we all went to church and came home expecting to start our feast. Only I had somehow turned off the oven. We ate very late that Thanksgiving.

Has anyone else had a run-in with a turkey? 

I always spent the holidays with are family, but one year when my 2 cousins were home from Viet Nam war, my mom decided to invite the marines that couldn't go home we had about 10 guys, plus family members. We had the best time, even though our house was crowded, it was the best holiday ever, some of the guys still keep in touch with our family. I help out at a army base and it makes me feel good.

Oh, your poor little girl!  I hope she's feeling much better today.

She's fine today. So I'm thinking she must've eaten something that didn't agree with her. Thanks for your well-wishes.

Carole, what a wonderful thing to do! I'm sure that was a wonderful time for all!

I love these stories. I do remember one time when I had been married less than ten years fixing the dinner and everything was ready. Or so I thought. I took the turkey out and it was still red inside because our oven went out. The burners worked but not the oven part. Yuck! We had thanksgiving with all the trimmings except the turkey. Cranberry sauce isn't quite as good without turkey.

Margaret 

That's brave to microwave it. I'm so paranoid about food poisoning, I'd have stuck it in the oven longer, kept the rest of the food warm, and let everyone have some more munchies. I keep munchies on hand just for that purpose! We've had a few years when the turkey wasn't done on time, but I just let it cook longer!

Well, of course, I'd have to contribute a funny moment.  My husband Jeff's relatives have all stayed nearby, and Thanksgiving is their big holiday so one of my first meetings of all his family when we became engaged was Thanksgiving.  We're talking 40+ people here.  After dinner, when Jeff's grandfather made some formal announcement of the engagement, Grandpa calmly informed the crowd that as the wife of the eldest son of the eldest son, it was now my duty to bear the Pleiter family Heir!  I didn't have the heart to tell him he was talking to the wrong set of chromosomes (dad's genes select the baby's gender, if you didn't know), and I was so shocked that he'd commissioned a son like that in front of all these people I hardly knew, that I just gulped and nodded.  We gave my son his great-grandfather's name as a middle name...it seemed like the right thing to do!  You won't be surprised that even though our son is now the eldest son of the eldest son of the eldest son, we are NOT continuing the practice...NO ONE will commission his future wife like that one day around my Thanksgiving table!

PS Dream, I'll be happy to give away a copy of Bluegrass Christmas if you want to do a drawing. 

Dream, I will give away a book after Allie's, if you need one.

Margaret 

Ellen - you're story was cute and funny.  My story is mean/funny.  My Dad and Step-mother hosted Thanksgiving one year.  They cooked the turkey and my husband and I brought pies.  My step-brother and his wife brought flowers and wine.  We had a very nice meal and then afterwards while I was doing the dishes, my step-mother starts packing up all the leftover food and gives it all to her son and his wife.  No leftovers for my husband or me.  (she even gave her son the leftover pie we brought)   We were floored.  I didn't even know what to say, I was shocked and I thought it was funny.   (not in a ha ha way)