Thanksgiving prepping…

The Thanksgiving preparations are underway at our house… the different breads have been cooked and cubed and are drying in preparation for the dressing in a couple of days.  I made cranberry relish (finely chopped cranberries, oranges and sugar) and it’s in the fridge melding.  Yep, melding… it’s the key to most all good soups and sauces (and people, too).   Next, I have put the bread ‘n butter pickles in the fridge to chill — these are the pickles I made at the end of August… mmm, mmmm, mmm!!  I got the freezer jam out of the freezer and set it in the fridge so that it’ll be ready to serve on Thursday, too.  The chickens are thawing and I’ve gathered the garlic, herbs and onions from the garden — these will go into the chickens I’ll be roasting.

Can you start to see the theme of this year’s Thanksgiving meal?  Yes – as much as possible, we’re using things that grew here on the land or that we raised here.  We didn’t grow Jello — so that Jello pretzel salad I’ll be making didn’t grow here – but the raspberries, which will be part of it, did. ;o)  I am simmering the sweet potatoes right now and they will be baked up in a casserole that our family just loves for Thanksgiving.  Here are some more helpful Thanksgiving hints from our site.

I thought I’d include a video in case you’ve never roasted a chicken *and* to show you how I am planning to prepare our chicken so that it will have a ‘traditional’ Thanksgiving taste!!  This will be the second time in thirty years that we haven’t made a turkey for Thanksgiving.  Strange.  Strange but good.  We’re doing this for many reasons – but one thing we’ve learned about making foods for Thanksgiving is long-term planning and part of this year’s long-term planning included making sure I set aside the foods we’d need for this day (and that meant canning, freezing, drying or purchasing them) but I forgot one of the main ingredients.  Yes.  The turkey.When we were in our grand chicken experiment – and all the things we had to learn along the way in raising chickens – we weren’t thinking: turkey.We were thinking: chicken and chicken tractors and waterers and all that stuff. And that was enough.  At the time.  Now, it’s Thanksgiving and I’m wondering why weren’t we thinking: t-u-r-k-e-y?

Tomorrow I’ll roast the pumpkins, puree and prepare them for pumpkin pies.  The wheat we ordered from Eastern Washington will be ground into flour… and apples from  papa’s tree will be sliced for the pies. We’ll probably only have one walnut and one hazelnut pie — using nuts from the trees here.  The squirrels sure beat us to most all the nuts this year and we weren’t gathering them as we ought to have done as they fell to the ground.  Sure reminds me of the Proverb… consider the ant…

I pray the LORD will remind me to live *in* each season preparing for the next… occupying in the moment in light of the next moment… ever mindful that actions always have consequences.

Happy Thanksgiving!