It’s already December 1st,  talking about Thanksgiving feels passe. This year Thanksgiving was epic for several reasons.  It was the first holiday I have hosted for many people.  We raised our own turkey.  I made all the pies, well, I bought one and made four.  Finally, there was a wonderful amount of snow on the ground.  My favorite holiday was fantastic.  Here are the top seven things about my Thanksgiving.

7.  Whipped Cream Party

I wasn’t sure how much heavy cream to whip up for the fruit salad and as a topping for my beautiful pies.  So, I whipped it all.  I am not sure how many cartons it involved, but I had a large mixing bowl of fluffy white stuff and wound up using only a fraction of it.  My sister jokingly mention that afterward, we could have a whipped cream party.  My Midwestern mother said in her perfect Minnesotan accent, “Thaat Sounds Dirtee!”  Oh, mom, I love you.

6. The Parade

The Max had a punishment which was to end on Thanksgiving.  I told him it would be over early if he sat and watched The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in it’s entirety.  So, the parade was on all morning and nobody fought me for the remote.

5. Green Jello Mold Salad

Growing up in Minnesota, green Jello is a major food group.  This is especially true if your family attends church potlucks in the basement of your local worship building.  My grandma’s Green Jello Mold Salad was the best, I tried to duplicate it, and failed.  But it was still green Jello mixed with the unimaginable.

4. Sled-boarding

As long as I can remember our family does one of two things on Thanksgiving night.  We either go to a movie or we sled.  The nearest theater is not near at all, so I was very thankful for the foot of snow on the ground.  All the wee ones stood on their sleds and pretended to snow board with them.

3. The house was warm

We have heaters here in the Pilver house, just not enough.  All the smaller rooms are toasty and warm when the heaters are on, but the main room with the 20 foot ceiling is typically chilly, got down to 45 degrees in there last week during a cold snap.  However, with twenty people milling about and the oven on for many hours, things were juct fine and toasty in every corner of our home.

2.The Guests

I am not going to post a picture of everyone who was there, because I don’t have a photo with everyone in it.  Eighteen people were packed into my home for a dozen hours, give or take, and we all had a smashing good time.

1. The Bird

Last spring I stopped by the feed store and bought three teeny turkeys.  Over the summer and fall they got fat, feathered and ornery.  While, of course, they were well taken care of, they were also looked at as food.  I often have people asking if it’s hard to eat animals you raise and so far the answer is not at all.  It is satisfying to be able to know where your food came from and what the animals ate before you eat them. The turkey we chose last Thursday morning was a whopper.  After he was gutted and plucked he was still over 30 pounds.  If we had followed traditional cooking times the bird would have been done  last night.  Instead we cranked the oven and rubbed a lot of butter on his breast to keep him from drying out.  It worked too, best turkey I ever ate.

So there it is, seven things that were great about Thanksgiving.  I hope you were blessed as well.  Now let’s get a move on to mistletoe and candy canes!