Thanksgiving Eve

I've been busy all day today, getting ready for tomorrow. I spent most of the morning baking sweet potatoes in the microwave, preparing them for a casserole recipe that I found in a cookbook. Once you bake the sweet potatoes, you mash them up, add just a touch of butter for each potato, less than a teaspoon of light brown sugar for each potato, then mash everything up together. To that, I added the grated rind of one large orange, then I squeezed that orange and added the juice to the sweet potato mixture. Heavenly aroma, let me tell you.

Into a baking dish went the mashed sweet potato mixture, then I sprinkled just a touch of brown sugar and cinnamon on the top, then sprinkled some crushed pecans and cashews on top of all of that. I thought I had an apple left from the pie-baking, but I don't. If I had, I would've chopped that up and sprinkled that on top too just before I put the casserole into the oven tomorrow afternoon. And I even ran out to Kroger tonight, to get vanilla ice cream for the pie, so I could've bought apples, but I just didn't think about it. I never remember to buy ice cream for pies... I don't like cold ice cream with warm pie, but everyone else seems to.

Anyway, I'm sure the sweet potato casserole will be just delicious... it should puff up a little bit during the baking tomorrow and come out like a very thick souffle. That recipe is actually a compilation of a few recipes.... I omitted the heavy cream (sweet potatoes don't need that and neither do my hips), and I cut the amount of butter way down (my hips don't need that either). After I was finished with the sweet potatoes this morning, I "dressed up" the dining room table. Lots of coppery, sparkling branches arranged flat down the center of the table, that I had bought at the downtown Christmas Nutcracker Market a few weeks ago... perfect copper color for a Thanksgiving table.

While I was doing that, my sister called and wanted to know how to make that sweet potato casserole. I had told her about it last week, but she didn't write the recipe down and she was making her sweet potatoes today, just as I was. So as I set and decorated our dining room table, I told her the recipe and she was mixing everything in as we talked. She mixed some raisins into her mashed sweet potatoes, then drizzled honey on the top of the casserole. Must be in our genes... we both change recipes as we go along.

Then we got to the good stuff... we both opened a gift from our Christmas packages. Today's gift was the second one.... we opened the first one the other day. We had both mailed out the Christmas boxes last week, and we both got them on Monday. We're ahead of our schedule-- we usually wait till after Thanksgiving to mail those out, so we're usually not opening Christmas gifts before turkey-day. Rules are made to be adjusted.... traditions are made to be amended.

My sister and I send one another little stocking-stuffer gifts.... nothing big, nothing fancy, just little gifts to open which will make us laugh or smile. My sister has just one rule-- I can't send her anything that needs to be dusted. Everything I send her must be something that she can use. (Such as soaps, candles, notepads, fancy napkins, tea, coffee or hot chocolate, decorated sugar cubes.... once you get to thinking, you can find dozens of things to fit that category.) Our husbands think we're crazy, to be opening gifts before the holiday, but this is just our thing to do and we enjoy it. Plus, we always open the gifts while we're on the phone, so that adds to the fun.

The first gift from my sister last week was two packages of tiny angel ornaments. Each angel is just over an inch high, each made of colorful resin in different pastel colors. Some of the angels have blue gowns, others have green, some have yellow or pink. My sister thought I could use them to decorate a little table-top tree, which I may just do. I may also use some of them to glue onto placecards for next Christmas. I can't do that for this Christmas because I've already made the placecards for Christmas dinner..... I used red and white porcelain Santa Claus buttons on this year's placecards. (I had found those at a yard sale a few years ago.)

The second gift, which we opened today, was a package of "Cinnamon Stick" tea. Smells delicious, but I haven't tried it yet. I'll probably taste the tea tomorrow evening when we're having dessert. Cinnamon Stick tea should go nicely with either the pumpkin pie or the apple pie. But tomorrow is Thanksgiving, so I'll have a thin slice of each.

The weather has turned warm again.... bright and sunny and very warm today, and tonight's temperature will be around 60 or 65. I am so happy about that, because I've got the cats out on the porch since early this afternoon and they'll be out there till everyone leaves tomorrow night. They're not exactly happy about this arrangement, especially since they spent the last two nights sleeping on our bed. They appreciated that, I'm sure, being that the last two nights were so cold here. They are pure southern cats and don't understand the cold weather. AngelBoy has been meowing by the breakfast room door most of the afternoon. I've gone out there time and again to pet his blue-eyed little face, but I know he won't be satisfied till I let him back into the house again tomorrow night. Cats don't understand patience either.