Thanksgiving at Home

Sheila and I had a quiet Thanksgiving at home.  

I've been sick with a cold of some sort over the past few days and I'm still feeling pretty lousy.  Laying down causes the stream flowing from my nose to run down my throat so sleeping has been difficult.  Breathing is difficult.  And, it is mildly affecting my mast cell disease too.  It was good we had no plans to go anywhere because I definitely would not have been up for it.  

Honestly, I don't like going anywhere on Thanksgiving anyway.  I despise the "so-called traditional" Thanksgiving dinner (it is not traditional to me) so I don't eat much when that garbage is offered at someone else's house and then I'm starving by the time we get home.  

Even as a child, one of my uncles and I used to throw some steaks on the grill (and fresh fish if I had been fishing earlier in the day) on Thanksgiving while the rest of the family ate that Thanksgiving garbage.  So not liking the traditional Thanksgiving food is nothing new for me although I have to mention that, over the decades traveling around the country in the military, I did have a handful of really delicious and pleasantly memorable Thanksgiving meals.  Those were very few and very far between though.  I have a lot of unpleasantly memorable Thanksgivings too hence my disdain for this particular holiday.

We did manage to have a really nice dinner later in the day and we decorated the Christmas tree so, in my mind, it is Christmastime now.  

Here are a few photos of our mantle over the fireplace...

Sheila decorated our garden window over the kitchen sink.  The next few photos are the garden window...

For dinner, I made a roast pork, mashed potatoes, greens beans in a white sauce (homemade...  not a nasty can of Campbell's soup) covered with homemade fried onion straws...

I made some cranberry sauce the day before Thanksgiving... 

In case anyone is wondering what those square chunks are in my cranberry sauce, I add some chopped pears to my cranberry sauce for a little more depth of flavor...

We had some dinner rolls...  nothing fancy here though...

The day before Thanksgiving I also made some sweet tea and a blackberry syrup to add to the tea.  We serve this over ice with fresh mint and the blackberry syrup.  This was the drink of the day for both of us...

Sheila and I watched the Florida Gators basketball team get run off the court...  that was a very bad game.  It seemed like the team was still half asleep.  Their timing was completely off and they were playing too slowly against a fast team that hustled more.  It is really disappointing watching a team that you know is better than they are playing get run off the court by a team that is definitely not as good.  Florida kept throwing the ball away and not just missing shots but were missing the rim!  Then we watched the Dayton Flyers put Georgetown in their place.  That was a good game, fortunately.  

In the morning, Sheila and I watched a new Netflix Christmas movie...  "A Merry Little Ex-Mas"...  that was a pretty good movie.  It was amusing.  If we didn't have basketball games to watch the rest of the day, we would have watched more Christmas movies.  I don't do football on Thanksgiving.  To me, football is as boring as golf and baseball....  maybe even more boring.  

Sheila and I talked a bit about our own Thanksgiving experiences through our childhoods and young adult lives.  We compared our experiences.  Our childhood experiences were pretty much the same but my experiences changed as a young adult.  

After heading back to my parents' house as a young adult in my 20s for one Thanksgiving, I vowed to never again do that.  After that, I was the guy who always volunteered to remain on duty through the holidays from Thanksgiving through New Years.  And, I was always the one to arrange the holiday celebrations on base.  After I retired, I continued that tradition.  If a friend or acquaintance had nowhere to go, they came to my house.  Those were some nice Thanksgivings and Christmases.  

One particular Thanksgiving, I was a young sergeant at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio (where we recently visited with two of our oldest grandchildren).  I was always the one who arranged these holiday events and parties and that particular Thanksgiving was no different.  I had arranged for a large group of us to have a very long table in the chow hall for Thanksgiving dinner.  

The Air Force does food service well.  On Thanksgiving they do it even better.  We had white linens and a nicely decorated dining facility.  We had a table of about 16 to 20 of us.  I was at the head of the table and I had a few bottles of wine stashed under the table at my feet.  After each of the airmen gulped down their glass of water, I discretely filled their water glass with wine.  The wine appeared to be grape juice in these water glasses which was our plan.  

What I did not plan on happening was that the Commander of the Day (the Base Commander was on leave so another officer was tasked as the Commander of the Day) came to the Dining Facility to make sure everyone left on base was being taken care of properly.  When he entered the dining facility to inspect everything, he approached our big table.  The extra long table alone attracted attention.  When he approached our table, all of us at our table stood and greeted him...  I offered the seat next to me...  the airmen that was sitting there rolled his eyes but quickly and quietly moved to an empty seat at the far end of the table.  We left a few extra empty seats at the end of the long table just in case some others wanted to join us.  The Commander of the Day sat down next to me with his plate of food.  

The tension at the table was pretty obvious.  Before this officer entered the room, the guys at the table were laughing and clearly enjoying themselves.  Now the guys at the table were quiet and didn't know what to do.  

We were sitting here in the chow hall with wine which, really, was a no-no even on a holiday.  The bottles of wine were at my feet under the table and, since I was the ranking guy at the table and the guy pouring the wine, I figured I would take the grief if we were caught.  I had arranged it all and I had taken the heat for a number of "incidents" on the base already anyway so I was used to it.  Besides, I was the ranking guy and that is how it works.  I take the heat.  So, we sat there in awkward silence for a short while.  

The Commander and I made some small talk.  I asked about him having to take some time out of his holiday to check on the base facilities and how his family is handling it.  That eased the tension somewhat but we were still almost caught with alcohol in the chow hall while we were eating with the Commander of the Day.

Then there were a few more tense brief silent moments until the Commander asked, "how long do I have to sit here before you offer me some of that wine?"  I smiled, reached for his glass with one hand while my other hand reached under the table for the open bottle of wine and I filled his glass.  The tension was broken and everyone enjoyed the rest of the meal.  

That Commander talked with each of the guys at the table and we all had a good time.  We then moved the party back to the barracks.  That was a rare nice and memorable Thanksgiving.