topic of the week
Even with everyone trying to get an appointment last-minute before Thanksgiving, I've noticed a theme to holiday plans: keeping things simple.
“I just want it to be a Thursday,” one client said to me. “We're going to the movies. I haven't put out one decoration, and it's wonderful!”
Another said she and her daughter are having people over Thursday evening for snacks and games. She talked about the high cost of food and how she just didn't feel like competing with all the other invitations thrown at her loved ones. “I want to see them, and it doesn't need to be anything more special than that.”
We're having my parents and my mother-in-law over. They're very different people, and they've never met. (Ours has not been a traditional marriage.) I'm a little anxious about it, but I live my life anxious, so…
It'll be fine.
Tony and I get into the food part of Thanksgiving. We do a wide spread of gourmet food. No canned cranberry sauce at our table! Tony makes it from scratch (with orange rind!). We cook the turkey upside down a bit to allow maximum flavor before flipping it to keep it pretty. Our mashed potatoes have parsnips for a little zing. I make a blended sweet potato and leek soup (heavy on the heavy cream--this is not a dieting holiday). We cave and get the Costco pumpkin pie his mother loves (with Cool Whip, her favorite), but we would create a top-tier dessert if she didn't request the pie. Oh, and we cheat a bit on the gravy and use a packet with some of the drippings. (Sue us.)
We like doing it, though. If we didn't, we'd figure something else out, like our friend who is slow-cooking a turkey breast for her family.
We did set up the tree, though. For the first time in years, Tony, Rhiannon, and I all worked on it together. It was comical and fun. And easy because I've been putting it away with ornaments still on it. Feel free to judge.
2023 has been a strange year. Trying to pretend the pandemic never happened seems to be a global event. Multiple wars in the news, one kid starting college, the other deciding on the National Guard, health issues, a full-time business, car problems… Well, it's a kitchen sink stew of stress most days. Choosing a simple holiday makes sense.
For us that means forgoing our usual Beige Food Friday event. It's our annual Friendsgiving that involves everyone bringing leftovers (all beige, of course), but this year Tony and I are working. We both feel okay about it because our new dishwasher hasn't arrived, and we're done hand-washing a million dishes. Tony has dishpan hands at this point (it's been over a week). It's a first world problem, and we're grateful that too many dirty dishes is our biggest issue this week. We should all be so lucky.