I've reached the wine and cheese/charcuterie plate part of the day.

Oh right, I can do that as a fancy meal for today! (We had bought a ham, because the Madwoman said "Haaaaam", but all of us forgot that the Madwoman not knowing what day it is (ever) or celebrating holidays (extreme misanthrope) + us forgetting to remind her last night means we ... don't actually know what we're having for meals today. If I could eat popcorn, I'd recreate the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving meal.)

I heated up my restaurant dinner and ate it. Now I’m over full, and still have some left. The food was ok, but the “cheesy mashed potatoes” were super weird. They had like....hash brown shreds running through. No idea if it was potatoes or turnips or onion or what? It didn’t taste bad, I kind of liked the texture, but not what I picture for “mashed potato”!

Thanksgiving meal was turkey & etc. from a local Davis Square restaurant, which was ready right when I got there (lots of people waiting there, socially distanced, but she called out my name first, so yay!) and pretty yummy. I remembered to get jellied Ocean Spray cranberry sauce, and proudly displayed it on our table in the proper red monolith format (as God and my Mom intended).

I dined at 1, and then took pie to Amyth at 4:15. She’s having Thanksgiving dinner with her best bud from high school and her friends who moved down from NYC and have been taking care of her. We were able to chat for a bit, and she mentioned that really appreciates all the contributions from the Buffistas, so I’m passing along a big thank you.

Now the dishwasher’s running, the cats have been fed, and I’m going to become one with the sofa for an hour or five.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The turkey thighs that I dry brined for a day and then rubbed with butter before roasting turned out great. The skin even was crispy and delicious. Potatoes were good, gravy was passable. I only bought two thighs, but they were big ones, so now I have a lot of leftover meat. I may make another attempt at gravy tomorrow with the drippings that I saved.

I didn't prepare dessert, but perhaps I will make cookies later.

So I confess to going out for dinner to a restaurant this afternoon. We wanted to sit on the patio, but it's rainy, so no patio, but they had the whole wall open and we were sitting right next to it, so as close to outside as possible. I am still going back and forth about whether or not I should have gotten the turkey, etc. (I did, and it was delicious, but nothing amazing for the fancy-restaurant $$$$$.)

Rats. The line for Tommy's Joynt was around the block and by the time we were getting in at the end they were telling people not to wait since they were already running out of food. We headed to Whole Foods as a last resort only to find they had turkey and sides but no gravy. So me and the Math Greek are at home eating TJ's Nantucket-style cranberry pie, which is quite tasty even if I have serious doubts about their claim that this is "found on holiday tables across New England."

I looked in the fridge and discovered we had sweet potatoes, a ham steak, and many types of cheese, so I threw together a casserole! Sometimes I remember how to do the food part of adulting.

We pretended really hard that we were going to have a scaled-down Thanksgiving, so we had 10 things instead of like 12???? because moderation and holiday cooking don't quite mesh. But anyway, we had outdoor dinner with the in-laws, sent them home with a giant pile of leftovers (and kept about 3x the same for ourselves), ate pie as is required of the season, and had the difficult talk about the December Holiday and how we would be doing outdoor things again even if out of town family decided to come visit them. They're hearing reason, at least. Which is an improvement.

Thanksgiving for just the two of us Type II's is a small spiral cut ham, coined (orange) sweet potatoes quick-braised in butter with ginger, onion, garlic, and coarse black pepper, quick-steamed asparagus with butter and coarse sea salt. H made two low-sugar pumpkin pies in store-bought graham crusts--so good! But the neighbor sent over two generous slices of her made-from scratch with heavenly perfect flaky piecrust, plus a little bowl of whipped cream so we'll be having those tonight.

StY and GF had brunch of deviled eggs and drop biscuits with honey and/or preserves. Their turkey and sides were finishing when we spoke an hour or two ago. I'm very grateful for both of them.

As I'm grateful for this place and all of you. My mainstay through joy and sorrow, and troubles and clear sailing. ::raises glass:: to us--Happy Thanksgiving!