Lorena has been earning points for shopping at the Tom Thumb supermarket near where we live. She used all her points to buy a new turkey cooking pan and rack because our old pan started to rust. She is giving it double duty to cook the flan. It does not get much better than that–flan and a turkey in a free pan! Lots of reasons, big and small to be thankful.
Grandpa Milo called this morning, too. His Thanksgiving with my siblings and all the kids’ cousins will be tomorrow afternoon just because of how all the timing worked out. The reason he called is because he remembered a hymn he thinks might be good for Grandma Sarah’s funeral. We have to look up–we know the hymn really, really well, but do not know the number off the top of our heads. He sang “…we’ll gather round the throne, a victor throng” and a few more lines we could not quite make out. He is obviously very sad, but much better than a week ago. These are more things for which to be thankful–a recently passed Mother/Grandmother in a good place and Grandpa Milo who stays optimistic in the face of a very difficult time.
This is the first year our family has ever been split up for Thanksgiving. The kids, off at college on the west coast, will have Thanksgiving at their Aunt Julia’s house in Portland with Grandpa Milo, Grandma Sarah and a bunch of cousins. Lorena and I will have Thanksgiving here in North Carolina with Lorena’s aunt and uncle, Juan and Irma from San Antonio, her cousin Beto and his wife and three little girls from Dallas, and our friends from church, Emilio and Rocio and their son Pedrito and Rocio’s sister. The conversation here in North Carolina will almost certainly be 99% in Spanish. We hope to put up a few pictures later in the day.
We used Igor’s temperature differential minimization technique to cook our turkey this Thanksgiving and came out perfect. I would like to say that the results were conclusive, but I do not think I can. It is going to take a whole lot more experimentation. Here are the reasons:
Last night, we had a wonderful dinner of French onion soup, french bread, cheddar cheese, and pizza. It sounds a little odd writing it, but it tasted great. We all sat around the table and talked for a couple of hours after dinner, then made our way to the couch and continued talking until about 1:00 AM this morning. We got the turkey in at around 9:00 AM. Andrew and Sara will show up just in time for dinner. I will put some cooking and eating pictures up later.