| wdfifteen |
11-22-2018 11:50 PM |
Hope everyone had a great day!
It was pandemonium here, with 16 adults, 2 pre-teen boys, and 4 dogs. Three adults were "strays" - friends who weren't going to be with family today. One was the wife of a man deployed in A-stan and the other two were our neighbors. We all had a great time. My baby brother and his wife stayed away because of politics - really absurd in my opinion but that is the world they live in now.
The menu was eclectic. By request I smoked a 9 pound pork butt and about 5 pounds of smoked mac and cheese. Also by request MrsWD made squash lasagna and dill bread, while I made chicken breasts in tarragon cream sauce. Folks brought sides and deserts too numerous to count. For the first time in my memory there was no turkey and no mashed potatoes.
Our neighbor brought honest-to-goodness minced meat pie, which started a whole discussion of what minced meat pie really is. When we were kids my grandfather would butcher a hog in the fall and the scrapings of meat off of the skull was called minced meat. Grandma would make pie with the scrapings and apples and raisins. We live in a farm community now and it's like going back 50 years in time - for the first time since I was a kid, we had REAL minced meat pie made with hog's head scrapings.
MrsWD is Irish, and my side is German, so the social dynamic is always interesting. They are loud and demonstrative and we are quiet. I'm sure the strays thought we hated each other, but we were actually all having fun in our own way. The Irish ended up fighting and crying and hugging all over each other. Just before my brother and sister left for home we found a quiet corner to talk about how much we loved each other and to share a hug.
My brother has been archiving family photos and uploading them to some photo hosting site. He noticed a table in my office and said he thinks he recognizes it. Sure enough, he found a photo of it taken at thanksgiving at my grandmother's house, in 1955 showing long gone uncles and cousins, and in the background is my table with a 15" black and white TV on it. I have no idea how I came to own it.
So, that was thanksgiving 2018 in the WDfifteen household.
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