On Wednesday I left work early and came home to Christian and the kids and pies in the oven and pies in the making. This was the first year that Christian and I hosted Thanksgiving, minus the year we were in Brazil and had an alternative Thanksgiving. Ever since we moved to California we've been going to his aunt's house and it's always so magnificently fabulous that we've never felt the urge to host our own. But this year his aunt and uncle went to Italy and we have our new house that's big enough for such extravaganzas.
It was a lot of work but it was the good kind of work where you check things off to-do lists and your house smells so good and looks so good too because you're in a frenzy to clean it up for your guests. The kids were awesome. I made them to-do lists and they totally helped. When you say things like, "if you clean your room you get to eat as much pie as you want" they get right to work.
My whole mission was to make sure I made a moist turkey. So I brined the turkey and I soaked cheese cloth in melted butter and white wine and wrapped the turkey up. Then every half hour I would pour more of the butter and white wine mixture over the cheese cloth wrapped turkey, and it worked!
I was telling Cedar, Christian's cousin (the one holding Eliza in the picture above), that my first post ever on this blog was his sweet potato and orange puree recipe that he made the first Thanksgiving we spent in CA. That means that I'm coming up on six years of blogging.
I am thankful for blogging and am sad I don't have the time to do it as often as I would like, but because of blogging I have a job I really enjoy.
Six years later and I get to spearhead a project on the Foodie.com site and work with so many wonderful food bloggers. So many things have changed in the last two months and yesterday after having people we love and care for in our new home and sharing a meal with them, helped solidify that these changes are o.k.
Taking on a new job where I have to be in the office everyday, instead of working from home, has been a challenge. I miss my kids. Moving out of Santa Cruz, a place we love so much, to South San Francisco has been hard. We miss our friends and our community, especially our church community. Enzo has had to change schools and that has been hard for him too. He loves his new teacher but is having a hard time making new friends.
Holidays are good because they make you reflect on the past. This is our 10th Thanksgiving together, Christian and I, and we've spent most of them here in california but also in NYC, MA, and HI, all in different situations as we were moving around. The one constant was each other, and I guess the turkey too. Every year, even when we do have Thanksgiving at his aunt's house, there are always new people to share a meal with. I think that's why I love thanksgiving so much, the aspect of sharing something delicious that everyone can enjoy right there and then is amazing. It's not like Christmas where you're jealous that someone got a better gift than you, or you're annoyed that your kids are complaining about not getting enough toys. Christmas is great but there's always that element of let-down and disappointment.
So far I have never been disappointed with Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving dinner is like one big collective gift, and unlike Christmas where buying is king, with Thanksgiving homemade is better. Every year I like this holiday more and more.
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