12.18.2015

Plenty


I should have spent the day before Thanksgiving making FoodFoodFood, but instead I spent the whole day turning a battlefield (i.e. the upstairs) into a living space.  That night, I enjoyed not having to use a hatchet to clear a walkway into my bedroom, but the cost of that small luxury was having to cram all the baking (except the pumpkin cake roll) into a flurried Thanksgiving morning.






Turkey, gravy, stuffing, rolls, pies, candied squash, mashed potatoes, green beans, punch, cranberry salad, quick breads...

It's a good thing I have a houseful of Helper Elves, huh?  (The girls kept audibly sighing for Dobby or Kreacher, but, really, I think they're just fine on their own.)

 Annika made dough and then turned them into pumpkin rolls with a few, well-placed snips.





Ezekiel stole as much dough as he could manage.  (Yes, that's a raw turkey right in the middle of it all.  Salmonella, ho!)






Susannah made Cranberry Waldorf Salad.






Pip and Luci helped me turn the leftover pie crust into cinnamon sugar strips for a snack (okay, we were so busy this was actually all we ate for breakfast-- with milk to balance all our nutrients).












Annie finished off the pumpkin rolls with melted butter







and with pecan stems sent all the way from Texas.  (Those pecans were HUGE and delicious, Molly!)







Millie did a million undocumented things and made place cards, a necessary task...






because our guests were arriving!  Home, food, folks, everything we need in abundance and so much more.  I played Dylan's album New Morning all morning, to Millie's dismay, but his song "Father of Night" is one I always like to listen to on Thanksgiving.

Here you go.

Father of night, Father of day,
Father, who taketh the darkness away,
Father, who teacheth the birds to fly,
Builder of rainbows up in the sky,
Father of loneliness and pain,
Father of love and Father of rain.

Father of day, Father of night,
Father of black, Father of white,
Father, who built the mountains so high,
Who shapeth the cloud there up in the sky,
Father of time and Father of dreams,
Father who turneth the rivers and streams.

Father of grain, Father of wheat,
Father of cold and Father of heat,
Father of air and Father of trees,
Who dwells in our hearts and our memories,
Father of minutes, Father of days,
Father of whom we most solemnly praise.






(Luke:  to distract from your surprised face above, I give this goofy show-off.)







Speaking of goofy, in the next room over...





I may have ulterior motives for wanting Luke and Jae-Ryong at our gatherings.  This time, they brought savory Korean dumplings and the King's Dessert.  It's a most unusual and delicious candy made of thousands of honey strands wrapped around a sweet sesame filling.  Jae-Ryong showed us a video of a Korean man making some (fyi: he drops an "Omg" toward the end, but it's a cool video).











Three cheers for these two!






(Luke:  to make up for your goofy expression above, here's a picture Luci took of you looking cool in the corner chair.)






The following pictures were also taken by one of the girls.  I was reminded of how much I hate the flash of cameras as they walked around blinding all of us. (Plus, the flash really highlights all the fingerprints on our windows.)







The downside of no flash is a blurry snapshot, and here's one of the lovely Jae-Ryong giving the girls a violin lesson.






The End.


7 comments :

Unknown said...

HEY!!! You didn't give me the credit I deserve!!! I drew the pumpkins on the name tags!!!!!! :D

Millie said...

Not ALL of them. Or did you...

sarah said...

The name tags are cool, but those pumpkin rolls are adorable. I want to hug them all. And then eat them.

Abigail said...

That's kind of how I feel about my children. Huh.

Molly said...

P.S. I'm going to need that pumpkin roll recipe, please!

Molly said...

Something happened to my first message before my added, postscript!

What I first wrote is that the Thanksgiving feast looked amazing and that the collaborative effort of all created a memorable and lovely family gathering.

Still want the recipe. :) :) :)

Abigail said...

Molly,
The recipe Annika used was this easy one, but you can use your favorite roll recipe. All you have to do is shape the dough into balls and then snip the edges with a pair of scissors. I think Annika made about 8 snips per roll. She inserted the "stems" after baking. We got the idea from here. We got the pecans from Texas. ;)