12

The tree is up, and lighted. There are lights in two more windows. The house is clean -- well, cleaner! The apple stacker (obtained from Freecycle) is loaded with fruit; there are apples of various hues, oranges, tangerines, tangelos, and even bananas laid atop the rows. The stacker sits on a tray, which has been filled with mixed nuts in their shells. There is even a pineapple beside the stacker.

Rick will cook breakfast, consisting of grits, eggs over easy, and biscuits. We'll wash that down with coffee and grapefruit juice.

I'm doing a turkey in the oven and a leg of lamb in the crock pot. (Both were gifts, and I'd already started defrosting the lamb when I was given the turkey.) There will be most of the usual trimmings like dressing/stuffing, cranberry sauce, mashed white potatoes with gravy, sweet potatoes, pie. There will be a few of the add-ons that are not unusual, like crackers and cheese, a cake, crudites (raw vegetables) and dip, other snacks, spiced cider, soda pop.

There will be most of our unique traditions. Our relish tray will include pickled okra, both black and green olives, and something hot peppery. I couldn't get any kimchee, so I bought oshinko (pickled daikon radish) instead. I decided not to do sushi just yet, but I might do some for New Years. We have the quail eggs. We have a cake. I didn't bake cookies, but I will bake a cranberry-walnut bread I invented for Harvest Festival. I'm still tweaking it; this time it will have a little more brown sugar. I have eggnog and soynog, and I have goat cheese.

Some of our family traditions seem rather odd. The pickled okra one has been around since the kids were small. We tried them first at Thanksgiving one year, and we've tried to have them for all feasts since. I've done the two colors of olives since I can't remember when. The Asian treats go back to a year when the only discretionary part of the budget was food stamps, so I went to the international grocery store and tried to find things from as many countries as I could. Most of the countries I could represent via foods were from the Pacific Rim. The soynog and goat cheese are because I get a rash behind my ears when I eat or drink anything with cow milk or derivatives. The new recipe is another non-cow treat I make using goat milk.

When I took my mother shopping today, my son found a pair of shoes he's needed, marked $19.95. When he got to the check-out, he found out they were actually half-price. He didn't get to buy gifts for his sisters or me yet, but we got the CD with the Tom Clancy Rainbow Six computer game and expansion he picked for his dad when he was applying for a job at the game store. Quite by chance, I found a Reader's Digest Condensed book with a Rainbow Six novel.

Tomorrow, or rather later today, I will drive half an hour away to pick up Mother and bring her here. Later yet, I will take her home again. Her car is not working, and Rick hasn't had time to find out what's wrong with it. The weatherman is predicting rain, maybe freezing rain. I pray he's wrong!

Well, it's time to find out if the turkey is defrosted enough to cook, or not. When Mr. Tom Turkey is all thawed, I'll wake my older daughter (age 21) and have her help; we've got a rhythm for this job. Then, I'll stay up another hour and turn down the oven; we try within the limitations of the oven to follow the recipe for Perfect Turkey. (I would share the recipe, but someone else has the copyright. When and if I remember her name, I can try to get a link to her website for the recipe.) With the oven bag, we can skip the step of turning Mr. Tom over part-way through the cooking.

Gotta go!

Rose B, mother of three, in NC