Rambling about Thanksgiving Planning, School Work and Thrift Store Shopping

This is what happens when
Sadie tries to take my picture
when the babies are awake...

You guys just narrowly missed a post about how I fell part way down the stairs yesterday and am pretty battered today.  After glancing back over it I had to conclude that I've been quite the little ray of sunshine lately and that it served absolutely no point outside of whining and needed to be deleted.  After all, I got everything I needed to get done today, and I'm not sure how many times I can treat you to stories of my spectacular clumsiness.

Sadie and I took advantage of Patrick napping and Maggie having therapy to get to work on the stuffing this morning.  We chopped and seasoned and got it in the oven before Sadie abandoned me, muttering something about "school work" that needed to be done (which she then went out to do, by herself, while I continued cooking) while pausing to ask "how's everything going with Maggie?" to Maggie's Wednesday Therapist.

Math and religion continue to top the chart as her favorite subjects, with fractions of all things (yeah, I have no idea) being her favorite math activity.  I loved math as a kid too (somewhere I have my high school's shiny math award) but fractions? I definitely wouldn't have been searching out fractions worksheets to do on my own.

I searched through some green bean casserole recipes today, chuckling when I saw the words "from scratch" used in recipes where the ingredients included the words "canned AND fried."  Canned I could possibly see, but fried too?  If something is already fried I think we can cross "from scratch" off the page description.  At least that's how I look at it in this world where I have to monitor pretty much every ingredient that goes into Mae's mouth.

I came up with a version of green bean casserole that may or may not be good (I prepared the green beans and made a sauce for them out of chicken stock, mushrooms, an onion and a few cloves of garlic that were cooked and pureed into a thick mixture.  Tomorrow I'll be attempting "french fried onions" with onions, a little bacon grease and almond meal that will hopefully be tasty on top of my green bean creation).  Not using dairy (or soy) seriously puts a crimp in making any sort of green bean casserole, and shunning all things flour (including arrowroot and tapioca and rice and potato) added a little extra challenge so it ought to be interesting to see how it cooks up.

The pie crust for the pumpkin pie is done, the key lime pie is in the freezer and I'm making a berry crumble that is possibly my favorite crazy-diet friendly recipe, since everyone loves it.  I know that it's a ridiculous amount of deserts for five people, but deserts, for me at least, are the easiest thing to make with all the restrictions (possibly because I've put the most effort into learning how to make them...) and I console myself by thinking that these deserts are super duper healthy too.

Sadie also snapped this picture
of one of the other dresses I'd
gotten thrifted through
Thred Up a while back.
I think I look like
I'm about to fall over from
exhaustion, but I do like the
dress (which is also super soft!).

Also finished and in the fridge are two different cranberry sauces (one with oranges and one without), which will bring the main part of the meal to turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce and green bean casserole.  I'm trying not to miss potatoes (I've made the cauliflower ones in the past and they were good and may or may not be on the list if I can find a head of cauliflower in the refrigerator tomorrow).  My special mashed potatoes were formerly one of my favorite dishes (loaded with butter, sour cream and creme cheese of course, back in the days of dairy that I vaguely remember) and I'm kind of mourning not making them.

Maggie is going through a phase where she wants to eat pumpkin porridge at every meal (it's made with pumpkin, almond milk, dried unsweetened coconut, a dash of honey and peanut butter) so that's likely what she'll be having although I might be able to convince her to try a bit of berry cobbler.

Patrick will pretty much eat everything these days, voraciously.

Sadie will undoubtably be devouring a drumstick since that's her favorite part of every bird that I roast.

Speaking of birds for roasting, I went a little crazy this month and my freezer is now full of $9 turkeys.  Every time I went shopping I picked up a turkey for the freezer since spending $20 meant $10 off a turkey.  And since I usually roast a chicken once a week I just couldn't pass up a giant $9 turkey.

In other totally random news another Thred Up Box arrived (if you're tired of reading of my online thrifting adventures stop reading now!).  Since I haven't found any thrift stores I really love here and  I don't get out of the house to shop very often, I am rather fond of the idea of this particular store... and I'm very fond with how well the orders I've placed with them have turned out and the prices, shipped, beat the prices of the local places I've gone to.  The only thing that makes me sad is that they don't have a men's section!

Yes, I really am smitten.  Sadie growing out of her clothing so fast I can hardly keep her in pants.  And pants are a must right now, even when she insists on wearing a dress, since the weather seems intent on staying in the "feels like" single digits range as often as not.  Suddenly, hardly anything fits her lanky form.  So when the box arrived today it contained two pairs of jeans (one which was hot pink) and two dresses for Sadie.  Sadie immediately put on the two dresses that arrived for her and asked to be photographed:

One is a black velvet Winnie the Pooh dress and the
other is a blue Princess Aurora dress.

Maggie walked around savoring the softness of her princess zip up hoodie (she loves zip up sweaters almost as much as she loves boots):

I had a hard time getting her to look up because she
couldn't take her eyes off the softness of the fuzzy sweater.

And Sadie insisted on taking pictures of me since taking pictures is one of her favorite things:

$8 for a Banana Republic dress with fabric like butter (it was just so soft) makes me very, very happy because I'm 100% sure I could never have justified buying this dress when it was brand new.  And it's perfect for tomorrow!

Now to do a little sewing before I fall into bed to get some sleep before Thanksgiving arrives.  Paul volunteered to work extra hours this week, so I think it will be a pretty quiet day tomorrow for us.  Here's hoping this strange feast I'm imagining turns out!

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!