Thanksgiving, Ahhhh

There was a lot of trepidation about how our Thanksgiving holiday was going to work.  We could have tried to squeeze everybody into the camper but it would have been tight, really tight.  But a very fortuitous thing happened a few weeks ago.  While visiting our daughter and son-in-law a few weeks ago, Justin just up and volunteered to have, and prepare Thanksgiving at their place.  Sounds great, let's do it.

But this did not eliminate the trepidation.  Our daughter's experience in preparing a holiday meal was limited to a couple of the cold side dishes and the green bean casserole.  AND, her and Justin's dietary habits lean toward the tofu and Trader Joe's style of eating.  No matter, we are all going to be together this Thanksgiving and that is the best part of all.  Next year we should be on the road.  Maybe we will be settling in to our winter spot in Texas or Arizona, or on a park host assignment somewhere in the South.  Maybe we can time it to be in GA for the holiday, we just don't know, it is too soon to tell; for now.

As Thanksgiving approached I received a text from Shauna suggesting that we divide up the cooking duties.  Cyndee and I were to do the family recipes for dressing (we have two, one from the Perry side and the other from the Reynolds side), scratch-made cranberry sauce, Jack Frost (whipped cream topping), pumpkin pie, and stuffed celery.  They would do the turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, and deviled eggs.  Okay then, I guess we will figure out how to do in a single convection/microwave what we used to "need" an oven and microwave and grill to get it done in.  Oh, and a whole lot of counter and table space.  Oh, and a two big refrigerators.

Hey, all it took was a little calculating to figure out how long it would take to fix everything, one after another.  At 5:30am it was up and out of bed with the first batch of dressing starting at 6:00am, sharp.  Everything worked out great on our end, we loaded up the little PT Cruiser with our goodies and headed south for the city.

It is a 38 mile drive into Atlanta from our location in Cumming.  The local news was predicting that traffic was going to be a big snarl.  There was a good deal of traffic but it was lighter than what we normally experience.  We made good time and pulled up a little before 11:00am.  As we approached the front door of the kid's house you could smell the aroma, a blend of roasted turkey and sweet potato casserole.  Chad was already there, in fact he had spent the night.  Said he wanted to stay at his sister's so he would not have to get up early to drive down, he could just sleep until time to eat.  Justin's brother, Aaron was there too.

Shauna and Justin were in the kitchen. Everything was coming along just great.

Shauna was checking on the turkey and Justin was putting the final touches on the mashed potato's. 

The rest of the day went great.  The parade was on in the background while we visited and lunch went great.  We all had at least a brief turkey coma and then we started to divide up the leftovers.  I think we each came away with a couple of days worth of meals.  There were plenty of potatoes to go around.  Justin whipped up twelve pounds of garlic mashed potatoes.

I think the mantle of the holiday feast has been successfully passed to Shauna and Justin.  They own it now, we will be coming "home" to their place from now on.