stuffed

Mmmm yeah.

I had pie for breakfast and pie for supper. In between, we had the amazingly awesome turkey dinner.

I think I was on my feet constantly from 9:15 when I woke from being dead-asleep (I took a couple of ibuprofen last night as my back was really tweaking me by the time I got there, which was at the shockingly early hour of 11:30PM) until we sat down to dinner at around 2-ish. Oh, I guess that's not right since I did sit down briefly to eat my 3-pieces-of-pie-breakfast, but that's not the same as having a leisurely morning, leafing through the newspaper, all la-dee-dah.

Nope. It always surprises me how much time simple things take, like rinsing off some carrots, and peeling and quartering an onion, and rough chopping some celery to toss in the cavity of the bird. It seems like it should be about 5 minutes, tops, but somehow it stretches out into 15 minutes. And then the same strange time-elasticity effect occurs with putting together the stuffing. Or getting the cauliflower and squash out of the fridge and into their appointed casserole dishes. Heck, even putting together the little pickle tray took longer than I thought.

So dinner was targeted for 1, but we sat down to eat at 2, which wasn't too bad -- the turkey came out of the oven just before 1, but it needed to rest and then DH had to carve it -- when the turkey came out, the casseroles with all the fixings went into the oven. Then I started on the gravy, which is a time warp unto itself, but which came out beautiful in spite of looking like a gloopy mess only moments before it hit the table. Why, yes, I do seive my gravy, why do you ask? And now I'm always put in mind of the scenes from the first Bridget Jones movie where the gravy is an absolute disaster but Bridget and Darcy are ragging on their respective moms,"Oh, you're going to have seive that gravy," -- "Nonsense, it just needs stirring!"

Ahem. I seive it because then you get the maximum flavor out of the onions, celery, and carrots that have been roasting in the pan and simmering in the gravy up until that last moment where they give their all up to it as they get smooshed in the seive. My gravy is awesome -- and low-carb, because I know that any stray lumps of xanthan gum will be caught by the seive, too. Hee!

So today was another blur of cooking and eating, mostly. Also many phone calls to family. This evening I did read two new books to DD and DS2, Bear Stays Up for Christmas, which was charming, and a fantastic pop-up version of The Night Before Christmas, both of which I bought through the DS2's pre-school Scholastic book order process. I'm buying waaaayyy too many books these days. I'll have to back off, probably for the rest of the year! Well, after Christmas, anyway. That pop-up book was a steal: I think I paid $10 for it, where I know I've seen it for twice that, at least, at Border's, and it is simply breath-taking.

Pop-up books are like origami-on-demand. I've seen so many really clever and creative books that I never would've given a thought to, before DS2's love of them motivated me to find new ones for him to enjoy. This Sabuda book is beyond clever, though: it is art you can play with.

Speaking of art, I'm off now to shop my favorite online bookstore (the cheap flat-rate shipping is a huge plus) to see if they have any Saxton Freymann books. Now that the dinner is over all those delicious leftovers are tucked away in the fridge, I'm in full-on Christmas planning mode. And just writing that reminds me, I can pick up our Christmas cards at Sam's tomorrow...