Best half a long weekend ever!

Is there any other time of year this stuff gets used?

Wednesday:

12:30pm: Dan and I decide to work half days and meet for lunch in Portsmouth. Dan calls to say he will be late to which I replied, “Fine. Then I’m buying books,” and head to bookshop to get out of the rain, look around and indulge my book-buying addiction. (I buy books like other women buy clothes. Many of the purchases just sit on a shelf, but I have to have them. This explains why I once owned a book called Bagatorials, a collection of musings from brown paper bags.) I use my addiction for good and instead of buying Artie Lange’s memoir for myself (and since I couldn’t find Mary Karr’s latest work), opt to surprise Dan with the The Simpsons: An Uncensored, Unauthorized History by John Ortved when he finally shows.

1pm: Lunch at Flatbread Pizza, a pizza joint known for using “local organic produce, free range and clean meats”. We share a half chicken and black bean and half taco pie and wash it down with a blueberry wheat beer from Maine. (No gluten in pizza or wheat beer, right?)

2:30pm: Armed with a .45 in my ankle holster, we brave the Wednesday before T-day Stop and Shop crowd and fill a grocery cart with Yukon Gold and sweet potatoes, a couple of different sized marshmallows, and what Dan referred to as, “the most dairy we’ve ever had” in the form of skim milk, whole milk, light cream, heavy cream, whipping cream, three different types of cheese and yogurt. Also, mucho butter (and two bottles of red wine).

4pm: Wednesday afternoon nap---‘cuz when do we get to do that?

5pm: The cooking begins. Dishes prepared include:

Mashed potatoes- Having watched far too much holiday Food Network programming over the years, we’ve cut and pasted parts of our favorite recipes to come up with the perfect mashed potatoes. First we peel and cut ‘em and then leave them submerged in a giant pot of cold water for a half hour to get some of the starch out, making for optimal fluffiness. After boiling the potatoes (in a fresh pot of water) we use a potato ricer rather than a masher as both Dan and I our extremely anti-lump. We meanwhile combine and heat our various dairy products (heavy cream, whole milk and whatever cartons need emptying) with a stick of butter, an entire head of minced garlic and rosemary (which we later take out). We add the heated liquid bit by bit and stir it into the potatoes. Oh, and we had a couple (if not a few) bags of shredded cheddar and parmesan cheese. This year we added cream cheese too because why not have a little fat with your fat?

Coconut-covered Sweet Potato Balls: This Paula Deen recipe is so good, Dan owes Paula his left sweet potato ball.

Sweet Potato Pie (sans the crust) for the purists- Mash em’, stir in a stick of butter (Paula schooled us good), real maple syrup (or honey) and some cinnamon and nutmeg. The best part is the streusel topping (we robbed from a Tyler Florence recipe) made with a stick of butter (mmmhmm), brown sugar, flour and chopped pecans. (Also good licked off fingers.) Crumble it on top and it toasts right up in the oven. We stuck mini marshmallows along the edges (and made a L and a D in the middle) for fun.

Creamed Onions- Blech. Dan, who makes his own cream---no Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup for my man---, makes this for the moms. He’s done it for his mom every year, he’s made it for my mom and this year he prepared it for my brother-in-law’s mom. For the first time in my 28 years I try it---not great but the fact that it is basically a vat of cream helps.

7:30pm: Run back out to Stop and Shop for corn syrup (for Pecan pie) even though I fucking had it in my fucking hand during our first fucking trip to the store but thought we fucking had some at fucking home. We didn’t. Make trip out more productive by picking up Thai food for dinner (like the Pilgrims did on the first Thanksgiving Eve).

8-11pm: Finish all our food preparation (the washing, peeling, cutting, soaking and boiling of 12 pounds of potatoes takes longer than you might think), make pecan pie, eat Thai food, watch Glee, (Dan) does two loads of dishes, drink a bottle of wine and curse ourselves for taking a nap and not starting earlier.

Thursday:

Slept ‘til 9am---holla!

9-11am: Enjoy the Macy’s Parade and a couple of mimosas on the couch with Dan. This tradition started last Thanksgiving, our first major holiday spent in NH. Usually we are traveling on holiday mornings so now that we stay local on T-day we revel in the fact that we can just enjoy our morning and home and not have to stress out trying to get out the door.

11-12pm: Stress out trying to get out the door. Shower, dress, throw everything into the car and head to sister’s house where we are to celebrate with Becky and Jeff and their three girls, Jeff’s brother and sister-in-law and their three kids, plus Jeff’s mom and her husband. In rush to get out the door, pecan pie is left on table.

2pm: Ruin perfect mashed potatoes by adding too much milk during re-heating process. (Perpetrator will not be named but his name rhymes with “fan.”) Lots of jokes about potato soup made.

3pm: Death by turkey, stuffing and cookies.

5pm-1am: Drink lots of wine, eggnog and rum cocktails and eat lots more food. And cookies. Play two hands of Texas Hold ‘Em, a typing game on Bec’s computer (which I shouldn’t be admitting) and Trivial Pursuit…all of which I win. Really. (It should be said that Dan carries our Trivial Pursuit team, pulling out names like Ken Kesey, Jim Carville and Pat Riley. I know that Toni Morrison was the first African-American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature and remember that the characters in The Joy Luck Club were playing “Mah Jong.”)

1:15am: Dan drives us home and I somehow don’t fall asleep on the car ride though I do end up walking in the house shoeless, a sure sign of a night well-spent.

2:15am: Oh my god, NBC airs Texas Hold ‘Em games late-night. I am enraptured and can’t turn it off. Dan says I am never allowed to play online poker.

Friday:

8am: Peruse Black Friday online sales over morning coffee and oatmeal (which really is gluten-free.) Dehydrated and sick from too much gaiety, I promise myself I am back off gluten.

10:30am: Take hot bubble bath and listen to the rain. Try to read a book on mindfulness so that I am able to stay in the moment but it stresses me out and takes me out of it. Opt instead for The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows and am able to stay in the moment by transporting to 1940’s England.

12pm: “Nap” with Dan. (I kid…)

1pm: Layered leftovas sandwiches. Two pieces of bread sandwiching together, among other things, a layer of stuffing. No-gluten diet starts tomorrow.

3pm: Lie head-to-toe with Dan on couch reading our books. (Guernsey is such a treat. I am in love with every character and will be so sad to leave them when it’s over.)

3:45pm: Really nap.

6:30pm: Present. I’m not sure what the future holds but I’m pretty sure it’s going to involve pecan pie.

And there’s still two and a half days left!