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Thanksgiving -- 11/24/12 |
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Okay, just half a dozen photographs from my camera to cover Thanksgiving... . plus one taken by my niece Kristen. That's one of the reasons I haven't gotten to posting this entry until Saturday -- I put more than three dozen pictures up on Facebook in two albums (one for Wednesday night and one for Thursday) and I've now culled it down. (So, if we are Friends on Facebook, you've seen these photographs.) Wednesday night was when we had a whole bunch of people over to our house (there were at least 29 people here, counting children) for our traditional night-before Thanksgiving gathering.
I did most of my prep work in the morning -- made butternut squash soup and a tray of buffalo wings and a tray of spiedie-marinated chicken on skewers with pieces of red and green peppers and baby portobello mushrooms -- so all I had to do in the afternoon was cut up some veggies for a platter of veggies and dip. Jeremy showed up in mid-afternoon, set his work area up the way he needed it, and then set to work making his hors d'œuvres platters. In the meanwhile, Nancy got home a couple of hours later than she had expected -- instead of an early dismissal from lecture before the holiday, her professor ran an hour and a half over -- so she had to scramble to fix the lasagna she wanted and to get that in the oven. Fortunately, she had baked a cake and made batches of cookies in advance, as had Jill also.
Jeremy made a pair of cheese and cracker platters with fresh made red onion marmalade and tomato jam (and, not yet on the platter when I took this picture, some pear and apple jam) plus cornbread triangles and gluten-free crackers. The cheese included cheddar, assiago, brie, smoked gouda, four-pepper goat cheese, and goat cheese with herbs and garlic. Later on he produced a tray of fresh baked crisps (home-made potato chips) with bacon and lemon-butter mayonnaise. Then, as the crowd gathered, he began to turn out pizza after pizza with a wide variety of toppings (with his own gluten-free pizza dough). Maggie was there by then to slide up and pass around the cream cheese-stuffed pumpkin roll loaf she had baked on Saturday.
And, then, on Thursday morning, 17 of us went over to Aquidneck Island for the annual Newport Pie Run. Jill and I first ran this race in 1995 and have only missed it a few times. I think more than half of us ran the 5 mile race while the rest did the 3 mile walk. (I had planned to run the 5 -- especially after having run a couple of decent 5k races in September -- but my foot problems made me stop running this fall, so although I was registered for the run, I opted for the walk -- you can see by our numbers -- 41, 42, 43 -- that Jill & Jeremy & I had signed up early.) This was a multi-generational collection here. For example, Paul -- in the white shirt -- is married to Nancy's sister Clara. That's his daughter Kaitlyn next to him. The photograph is being taken by his daughter Kristen. That is Kristen's husband Dan standing next to Kait. And, in front of them are Kristen & Dan's three children. It was a beautiful day for it -- mild weather, very pleasant temperature. It was a typical sized crowd, a bit over 1400 people, although I would have expected that such a lovely day would have brought them over 1500 (as compared with times I have run it when temperatures were below freezing and the wind was brisk and snow was coming down -- brrrr).
And so on Thursday afternoon we again gathered for our family Thanksgiving dinner..
The meal was delicious and made even tastier by being surrounded by so many family members. Four generations gathered for Thanksgiving. (Only one of Nancy's siblings was unable to be here this year, but he was represented by a daughter and a grand-daughter.)
And that was our Thanksgiving...
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