Cooking and Cleaning for Turkey Day

Busy day today........ my husband was in the kitchen making the stuffing--- oyster stuffing. Delicious.... one of the best he's ever made, and he has made some awesome stuffing in the past. No one calls it "stuffing" down here--- they call it "dressing," but I just can't get used to that word.

I have my own type of "dressing"-- and that to me means clothes, which I spent some time trying on today. It was very warm out today, it's warm tonight, and it's going to be very warm tomorrow. I had planned to wear a black velvet skirt and top tomorrow, but with the temperature rising up there in the 80s, velvet is out. So I spent an hour in our dressing room this afternoon, with my closet door wide open, and outfits came out and went back in. Finally settled on a light-weight satin skirt and a silky top. I swear, I spend more time just trying on clothes lately.

Anyway.... the stuffing is done, the mashed potatoes are done, and so are the sweet potatoes. The turkey (8 lbs) and the turkey breast (5 lbs) are both washed and settled in their roasting pans and are ready to go into the oven. My husband saw something interesting on the food channel-- you take half an apple, a cinnamon stick, and a sprig of rosemary and stick all three inside the turkey before you put it in the oven. Sounds good to me, and I'm planning on doing just that tomorrow.

The pumpkin pie and the mincemeat pie are ready to be re-heated just a touch, and our friend L (C's mom) is bringing an apple pie. She is also bringing the cranberry-apple sidedish for the turkey. Our friends R and C will bring the vegetable dishes, so I'll just have to re-heat them when they get here. Needless to say, I will have both ovens going tomorrow, plus the stove-top.... the kitchen will be busy.

All the cats have been out on the screen-porch since this morning. It was beautifully warm all day today, and it's fairly warm out there tonight. Thankfully, the temperature didn't drop the way it did the night before last. I swear, I should get those cats an electric blanket so when it is too cool on the porch for them, at least they'll have something really warm to sleep on. As it is now, I've got all their cat-sized furniture and chairs lined with a fleece-y fabric, to cover up the cooler cotton fabric that's usually on their cushions. (No, my cats are not spoiled.)

The dining room table is all set, and looks fabulous. The theme for the table is autumn leaves, even though 99% of the Texas leaves stay green, rather than turning red and gold. I've got vintage Thanksgiving postcards at each place setting---- I've used them as placecards. I had some extra gold/red silk leaves (leftovers from the little Thanksgiving centerpiece that I made for the sideboard) so I took the leaves and scattered a bunch of them along the center of the table. They look great on top of the ivory tablecloth.

I used our green and ivory china, which has gold trim around the edges, then I used ivory and gold-trimmed plates for the salad course and for the bread & butter dishes. There's a candle on a gold dish in the center of the table, which is sitting on a gold-beaded diamond-shaped placemat. I decorated the candle with tiny leaves, the same little leaves that I used to decorate the placecards. Around the bottom of the candle plate is a glass-beaded wreath that I laid flat on top of the gold-beaded placemat..... the entire thing just makes the center of the table sparkle.

So I am as ready as I can be for tomorrow. All that's left is to get the turkeys in the oven tomorrow morning, and to get the ingredients into the bread machine so we can have warm fresh bread with the salad course. I found a great recipe for a light salad-- spinach leaves, pear slices, pine nuts, and parmesean cheese, all topped with a light oil/vinegar dressing. (There's that word again-- dressing.)

As ready as I can be......... but first I need a good night's sleep.