Thanksgiving. Yeah, it was almost like that. Except Donna and I aren’t that old (oh my God, are we?), and our guests weren’t flashing pod people grins.
Our kids and grandkids were here, along with a few friends. Donna borrowed tables and chairs and we were all able to sit down together for soup, salad, turkey, smoked goose, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, beans, cranberry relish, home-made biscuits, and pie, pie, pie. Life is good.
Nor did the gluttony end after November 22nd . . . we went over to another friend’s house last night for a Louisiana-style catfish fry. We fried fish, French fries, and onion rings in small batches in a propane-fired deep fryer. Rather than wait until everything was cooked to sit down and eat, we nibbled at each batch of food as it came out of the fryer. Tons of fun, but you also eat tons more than you think you’re eating!
Today should be a day of exercise and self-restraint. Self-restraint’s no problem . . . after all that eating, we’re happy to take a pass on food . . . but sloth has definitely set in. It dropped into the 30s last night, and right now, approaching noon, it’s not much warmer. So much for our bicycle ride!
We stayed home on Black Friday, save for a quick morning visit to the bank, where someone told us the police had already broken up two fights at Best Buy. Jesus, people! It’s just stuff! You’re giving gluttony a bad name.
A word about goose: not many people eat goose these days; most younger Americans, I’d guess, have never tasted it. People who heard we were serving goose reacted as if we’d told them we were going to eat kangaroo, but our guests liked it and went back for seconds. If you haven’t tried goose you really should . . . it’s a traditional English Christmas dinner, after all, so how exotic can it really be? But I wouldn’t plan an entire meal around a goose, because there isn’t nearly as much breast meat on a goose, proportionally, as there is on a chicken or turkey, so keep that in mind. They roast up just like turkey, though, and as I found, they also taste great smoked.
That’s our Thanksgiving report. Let’s see . . . thirty days until the next round of gluttony and sloth . . . maybe we’d better bundle up and go bicycling after all.