Thanksgiving - only a little crazy

My feet are protesting seriously from standing for the last three hours cooking and the necessary cleanup (mostly from me having thrown flour all over the place) so it was time to grab a fresh glass of wine and jot a quick note.

The spicey-still-warm smell of freshly cooked pumpkin pie permeates the house, the pecan pie just went into the oven since the broccoli-cheese-rice casserole and chocolate banana squares came out and are now cooling on the counter. I've had to give up on making my cousin's "derby peppers" appetizers. It's a shame because the little things are very tasty but I've had no luck at all with trying to stuff little slices of dried Spanish chorizo and aged cotija cheese into zesty peppadew peppers and she would probably nevery speak to me again if I called her at this hour to go over the instructions again :) So I'm stopping the insanity and declaring no pepper appetizers for us!

My sister-in-law is taking care of the turkey and most of the sides (I'm contributing the aforementioned broccoli casserole etc) this year, since we're going to her and my brother's house for the day. Last year we took part in Operation Homecooking... that's a program where two Air Force recruits (still in basic training) who don't have family or friends in the area to visit go to someone's home for Thanksgiving day. It was great! We had so much fun with our two recruits...and don't think I've ever seen anyone eat quite that much food quite that fast :) It was a wonderful way to share the day, though, and is something we will definitely do again.

For now I'm going to sip my wine, put my feet up while I wait for everything to cool and remember all the things I am so very grateful for. I hope you will have a wonderful day tomorrow, wherever you are and whatever you do. - Jo