Thanksgiving Evening

We had a wonderful day. I spent most of yesterday and then all day today in the kitchen. We're not very fussy, we don't have exotic tastes, so everything we make is just plain old-fashioned traditional Thanksgiving fare - roasted turkey, plain old bread stuffing like my mother always made (she says she got her recipe from the Betty Crocker cookbook), mashed potatoes, frozen corn, carrots with tarragon and butter, canned sweet potatoes with butter and maple syrup, jellied cranberry sauce from a can, gravy from a jar and a dark green salad. Everything came out great!

What did I eat? Salad and a wonderful, creamy soup I made by putting three plum tomatoes, an avocado, and a teaspoon of salt in the blender. It looked like a little bowl of refried beans, but it was delicious! Nice and salty. I've been craving tomato soup or spaghetti sauce lately. I really need to go online and find a thick, tomato-ey raw soup recipe, but this worked for today.

The pecan pie was really good, rich, sweet and decadent like real pecan pie. And you feel about the same afterwards - like you ate too much rich, dense dessert. The rest of the family had pumpkin pie (baked from frozen) or apple pie (Walmart) with Cool Whip.

After dinner, I read aloud while the guys cleaned up. :) Food for the mind as well as the body! I read an article I'd printed out days ago that I found from The Common Room and Dewey's Treehouse. It's called The Image Culture, and is about the various aspects of visual images replacing the printed word. It articulated what I've suspected all along about Power Point - that it allows people who have nothing to say, to say it with polish.

One message board I visit asked everyone to name five things they're thankful for, and here were my five:
--My family, and the opportunity to be a Mom; a husband who really loves me, values family, and doesn't mind helping out
--A comfortable home and enough to eat
--The freedom to adhere to what I believe is true, read what I choose, say what I think, homeschool my kids if I want
--the wonderful women I work with in the Ambleside Online project who are more than intelligent, they're also role models for everything I aspire to be
--The best friends I've ever had, who I met since moving here (one is an online friend, but I still met her since I've lived here) For someone as reserved as I am, who doesn't make close friends easily, this is truly a blessing and a source of amazement to me.

It's hard to stop at just five!