Leftovers...

 Well I am happy to report I made it thru Thanksgiving with nary a kitchen catastrophe, fire, or any bouts of food poisoning....(that I know of). I tried to have a lot of things done ahead of time but on the morning of turkey day I did still find myself in the kitchen most of the day. Thankfully I had made the desserts and salads the day before, so that only left me with cooking the turkey,ham, veggies, stuffing, side dishes, oh heck who was I kidding, I still had a ton of stuff to do that day. I also put off doing some housecleaning til that morning as well so I found myself trying to do a bit of catch up early on. On a bright note we did find Stink Pot's little bear, another small reason to give thanks. Now hopefully the cat will stop being a bit of a packrat and making off with my socks. She has a habit of now running thru the house with a sock between her gums flapping wildly as she runs up and down the hall. I try not to mumble too loudly in her hearing distance that she is just not quite right...poor thing.

I will have to admit though for my bragging on my cooking prowess I did have a few panic moments. First off I had a new roaster to use for cooking the turkey in, problem was it wasn't like the roasters I had used before. So I pulled out the thick manual and read the two whole pages of English over and over while thumbing thru the rest of the book of Spanish and French instructions wondering if they were giving them more instructions or if it just took a lot more words to say it rather than in English. I tried calling their 1-800 number to ask my question but I got a message they were all out to lunch, just my luck. I called back 20 minutes later and got the message they were all gone for the day. I have a secret suspicion someone was really there and just didn't want to work too hard that day. But I figured it out, got the bird in the bag and it was soon cooking away. I then tackled a can of jellied cranberry sauce that was rather persistent about staying in the can. Have you noticed how some tin cans now have a curved bottom? You can no longer open the can from both ends. I struggled for what seemed like 20 minutes trying to get the jellied sauce to slide out of it's container while still in one piece.. I shook it, and shook it, and shook the can til I thought the cranberry sauce would fly across the room and hit the wall with a thud before sliding down in a big pile on the floor. Thankfully with the help of a knife and a lot of coaxing it finally made it's appearance and I was able to slice it and serve it later without looking like too much of a hatchet job.

Feeling somewhat successful I then attempted to make sweet potato casserole. Now I have to admit I have eaten sweet potato casserole before but I have never made it myself. Somewhere I had seen a recipe I wanted to try and of course on that day I couldn't find it. I then came on-line to google for a recipe. I looked and looked and couldn't find exactly the recipe I was looking for. Several recipes had nuts, several had honey and all other sorts of things I didn't have on hand. I got to thinking what would Mac do? ...He would sneak in some pepperoni was my first thought so then I thought what would Vero do? Vero would be saying forget the sweet potatoes and did ya cart off that turkey carcass like I told you to? I then thought what would Cyn do? Cyn would say, well little tater, wing it on the taters.....so I did....and they turned out. Some people even had seconds. So thanks Cyn for the help you didn't even know you gave.

All in all it was a pretty good meal and a pretty good day. In my previous blog I had mentioned that Thanksgiving is a bit of a mixed blessing. That something bad usually happens around the holiday to remind of us being thankful and what the day is about, and without exception there was this year too. The day before Thanksgiving there was a funeral for a family member of my sister-in-law. There was two phone calls from my grandmother on the same topic... It was evident from those phone calls and another incident this past week that she is failing. There is always the good with the bad though, even with holidays.

I got to thinking today how life is like those Thanksgiving leftovers we all have in the fridge. Some leftovers aren't so great the next time around. Some leftovers are actually better the next day after they are given the chance for the flavors to meld. Some leftovers you have to add more stuff to them to make them seem more appealing. The only problem with that is, you now have more leftovers from the previous leftovers.

That is what memories are...they are leftovers. They aren't always as good as that original moment in time, but we have the bits and pieces leftover in our minds that still give us that good feeling. Some memories aren't the best and we try to throw them out before they spoil other memories. We try to remember the good more than the bad. We even will make more of a memory than what there was actually there to remember in the first place.

Memories....some are used, some are changed, some are best left forgotten in the back of our minds, much like those frozen leftover mashed potatoes. When the time is right we can pull them out, thaw, heat, and enjoy.....


or we could just call out for pizza.