the trip home was good, as usual. thanksgiving lunch/dinner was awesome and i played euchre and double-deck euchre with my aunts, grandma and cousin allllll afternoon which was FANTASTIC.
food, glorious food
my aunt pat, who much like myself does not cook (the running joke is that she and my uncle built a kitchen in their house purely for resale value), made this awesome veggie casserole and i have to remember to get the recipe because darn it, if she did it, so can i. my aunt jo made the desserts and oh! what desserts. pumpkin pie and pumpkin roll and the best pecan pie i think i’ve ever had. my cousin matt’s wife jenny makes this really good cranberry-orange relish stuff that goes really well with…everything, actually, but is particularly good on turkey.
my grandma is in charge of the turkey every year. she and my grandpa drive it over in their giant metal broilingroastingcookingwhatever pot and then my dad carves it and my grandma makes gravy from the drippings right there in the bottom of the pot. it’s like magic! grandma is also famous for her homemade chicken & noodles, so she made some of those too.
my mom made candied yams and a different kind of mashed potato. she bought a potato riser this year, so dad milled a bunch of potatoes then mom added sour cream and something else delicious and therefore horribly fattening. the potatoes came out sort of like a coarse mash (although not so coarse as the delicious SAGA smashed potatoes) but with a slight flavor that was not overpowering and went very well with grandma’s turkey gravy.
i managed to take it easy during the actual meal but spent all of euchre-time eating cold turkey from a little plate and then around 10pm, after everyone had gone, my mom and i pulled our usual post-huge-meal-weirdness and raided the leftovers, leaving nary a cauliflower in the veggie tray.
other culinary delights: my parents took me to the circle tap for ribs on friday night, my mom took me to chick-fil-a saturday afternoon and my parents, grandparents and i all went to the maid-rite for lunch on friday. since i’m doing the whole seattle sutton thing (see above where i mention that i don’t cook), the whole idea of actually picking what i want to eat (instead of having a set menu) was rather novel.
movies
the quad cities is a good sized metropolitan area and there are a couple of nice movie theatres, but the movie offerings aren’t nearly as varied as in chicago (nor can they be expected to be as such). thus, i had problems deciding what movie to see on friday (which was also my dad’s birthday). i decided on ‘walk the line‘ for a second go-round, because a) not much else was playing at the right time and b) i knew my dad wanted to see it and it was his birthday and he should see something he wants to see no matter how much he insists that i pick what i want to see. anyway, it was good the second time around, maybe better.
saturday there was a dearth of good tv, so mom and i went to the rental place in milan to pick out a few movies. but of course, since i see at least one (usually 2-3) movie a week, i had already seen almost everything, and my parents usually see a movie every week or so too. also, it was thanksgiving weekend and a lot of movies were completely checked out. we got ‘sahara’ (which i heard was bad, but was also described as indiana jones meets ‘national treasure’ and i think both of those are great so what the heck) and ‘the upside of anger’ (which tyler, i think, had mentioned was pretty good). i liked ‘sahara’ and thought it was a lot of fun, although i could see how it might be poorly received and i thought ‘the upside of anger’ was good, mostly because character studies or movies with grown-up topics are rare lately.
sunday the bears played, so while dad cheered them to their victory mom and i went to the moline theatre and saw ‘pride & prejudice‘ with 40 or so other football widows, their daughters, granddaughters and friends and a few guys who maybe don’t like football, whose team wasn’t playing, who are just a really good boyfriend/husband/son, or (my strongest hypothesis) who think keira knightly and/or rosamund pike are super-hot and wanted to drool for a few hours. the movie was really good. now i’ll have to rent the bbc colin firth miniseries. i know i know! i’m sorry, i just never got around to seeing it before. anyway, it was sort of odd seeing matthew macfadyen play mr. darcy (someone so serious and quiet) since the only other thing i’ve seen him in is ‘maybe baby‘, a little british film starring hugh laurie and joely richardson, wherein he plays a really annoying executive who is always wearing a cellphone headset (a tool tool, as meghan and i would say). he was good though, as was keira knightley and donald sutherland and brenda blethyn and everyone else.
i spent the rest of the weekend getting my eyes checked and watching tv and buying new mittens. aunt jo brought logan and caleb over for a bit on saturday (my mom printed out some open house invitations for my cousin and her new husband and new daughter). nothing else real exciting except for the aforementioned food and movies and euchre and seeing my family and cat and the joy of being transported everywhere by car and not having to wait out in the cold for said transportation to arrive and coming home to a house that is the perfect temperature and probably has a fire going as well. odd, the things that you miss the most. i’m already looking forward to christmas.