Thanksgiving: T Minus 5 Days and Counting

This picture is for Paula, who misses the changing of the colors in her midwestern home. These are burning bushes in my garden. I'd never seen "burning bush" before I moved here, but we have a whole bunch of them, and I love them. They are the only color we've seen this year, save our dogwood trees; most everything else is still greenish, or, in the case of the fruit trees, the leaves turned brown and dropped. We've never had a fall when the leaves weren't all gone by the first week of November. It's been raining most days for the past week, so this picture was actually taken through my French door looking out to the garden. The boys are going stir crazy, because they have been unable to get outside and romp with Thor. I'm just thankful that this week of rain hasn't been snow, because we would have lost a lot of tree limbs due to the weight of snow on the leaves.

I finished my Thanksgiving dress last weekend, although I haven't hemmed it yet. 2 of the kids got home from college last night; after my daughter finished raving about my wonderful stew and bread, she oooohhhed over my dress; I think she may try to steal it after it's hemmed. Well, it does have a lilac background, a color she loves, and, as I suspected, she loved the shiny silver.

The Thanksgiving menu is planned, finally; really, there's never much deviation, now, is there?

Thanksgiving Day/Thanksgiving Eve

4 loaves cranberry bread
2 loaves banana bread
4 Caramel Nut Coffee Cakes

These will be laid on the table for people to graze as needed. Around 2PM Thanksgiving, our friend Greg will arrive, with about 5 pounds of shrimp, peeled, and cocktail sauce. It's the only thing anyone has ever brought, and I love it. (I usually snag some, and hide them in a small bowl in the back of the fridge, so I can enjoy them in solitude on Friday afternoon.)

Thanksgiving Dinner:

Chernobyl Turkey (2 18 pound birds and 8 to 12 extra legs)
Harvest Stuffing (stuffing with diced apples, onions, celery, shredded carrots and walnuts)
Mashed Potatoes
Mashed Sweet Potatoes
Whole cranberry sauce
Jellied Cranberry sauce (canned)
Green Beans Almondine
Steamed Broccoli
Orange/almond salad (spinach, canned mandarin oranges & almonds with vinagrette dressing)

Bread Cornucopia (maybe - if I can find time Tuesday to make it from Italian Bread dough)
One loaf each:
Honey French Bread
Vienna Bread
Babylonian Bread
Sourdough Bread

Desserts:
Pumpkin Pies (2)
Apple Pie (1)
Lemon Meringue Pie (1)
Chocolate Sheet Cake
Orange Sponge Cake
Orange Mousse

Beverages will include water, milk, iced tea, Pepsi & Diet Coke. I'm not a big drinker, my cooking with wine habit notwithstanding; I know there are bottles of hard liquor in a cupboard which are 30 years old. Well, if they are still sealed when I kick the bucket, maybe the kids can sell them off as collectors items. Estate planning at its finest *giggle*.