5 Single Friends for Thanksgiving Supper

Yes, I did put on a Thanksgiving Supper for 5 single friends. Just the logistics of figuring out how to seat six of us at a table in my tiny office cum library/dinning/sitting room was time consuming. By Thursday morning I had a shopping list ready and took the morning off to go get a list of errands and shopping done.

One thing that had concerned me, was that I didn't have enough chairs to sit at the table I envisioned by shoving my little dining table that could seat 1 on each side up against one of my desks, and then bring up a white door in the basement to place across them to make a nice longer table. With only three chairs suitable to sit at table, (the others too low and soft), I had checked online and found that Canadian Tire had folding chairs at a special price of $17.97 and they were not just metal but had white upholstry padding on the seat and back. It took some effort to get three of them into my shopping cart, and to the checkout, and then into the car, but I succeeded.

I got home at noon, with pretty well everything on my list.

I spent the rest of Thursday, Friday and Saturday, trying to get in time on my business projects, but then also bagging leaves outside, and planning when to cook the turkey on Sunday and what times to start the mashed potatoes, and other veggies, and which methods to use.

I had plans for making pumpkin/apple pies, etc., but Shirley said she'd bring an ice cream cake, and Lynn wanted to buy a pumpkin pie, and Shirley's friend Pat was going to bring a jello salad, so in the end I was able to manage with the main courses and cleaning off the table and desk and getting them together, - oh, and also carrying the 16 aloe vera plants back into the porch for the day, and then back inside for the night, as the night-time temperatures were below freezing.

My cousin Gary came ahead of time, and so I asked him to bring up the door from the basement, and I covered it with a plastic table cloth and then a yellow-checked fabric.

I thought I'd said we would start at 5 pm but several thought I'd said 5:30 pm. However that worked out - as I was able to get the turkey cut apart and heaped one serving bowl with the white meat parts and another with the darker meat pieces. I mashed the potatoes, and made the gravey so that when the last two guests arrived, we were all set to start our Thanksgiving feast.

I served my last two watermelon from the garden for dessert, and we sat and visited a while. We had mostly cleared the table and were still visiting when I remembered Shirley's ice cream cake! I quickly brought it out and started slicing it like a loaf of bread. When each one had a piece I pointed out that we had only used up half of the cake, so seconds were allowed. In the end there were two slices left, but Shirley said I should keep that. Ah!!

However, my fridge is so full of left-overs that I won't need to cook anything else from scratch for the rest of this week. I may even have to put some items into the freezer, as I don't know how well they will keep for that long.

I did one big batch of dishes, and then my back started to complain. I emptied the cold dishwater and sat down to rest - in minutes I had dozed off. I woke about 2 hours later, feelin refreshed so I went back to the sink and washed the rest of the dishes. (The bones, skins, and gristle were in the crockpot and I left them to simmer through the night for the good broth I would get).

But then I was wide awake, so I checked emails for a while before I went to bed after 1 am. Totally content and satisfied that this Thanksgiving party had turned out well.

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