A Most Happy Thanksgiving Day!!!

It was a most wonderful Thanksgiving Day with my brother's family and a friend of my nephew's wife, Miho who we were very happy to welcome to our gathering. Carina is also from Japan and mom enjoyed talking to her.   

We started a full day of cooking on Wednesday by brining the turkey.  I then started the process to make a very special, rather unhealthy, downright decadent mochi rice (sticky rice) stuffing with lup chong, bacon, shiitake, cilantro, green and round onions.

I then cut the broccoli for broccoli casserole so I'd have more of a head start.  Art and I helped mom cut the gobo (burdock root) for her kinpira gobo.  We were exhausted by the end of the day and it wasn't even Thanksgiving yet.

Thanksgiving Day started with Art making his pumpkin pie.  I then got started on the bread stuffing and we prepared the turkey for roasting.  Mom took a good part of the day to make her "famous" macaroni salad.  I got the broccoli casserole ready so that it could go in as soon as the turkey was done.

My brother, Dennis brought the mashed potatoes, and I assigned him to make the gravy.  I'm really a klutz with gravy, and he is such a good cook.

Barry and Miho brought a scrumptious green salad and Carina brought white and red wines.  Mom had three glasses of white wine.  They were tiny glasses, but she did have three and loved it.

Before our meal, we did something we've never done before.  Usually I would ask one of my nephew to say a little Thanksgiving grace.  This time Art asked mom to recite a Buddhist sutra of thankfulness.  She was quite pleased to be asked to do it.  She is the daughter of a Buddhist priest, after all.  Still, I was amazed that she remembered the rather long prayer of thankfulness.

With all the food we prepared and the food that everyone brought, we had enough left overs to last all of us for a couple of days.

 We also had fun celebrating my nephew, Barry's birthday.  We'd all been too busy with work, studies and our travel to celebrate during his real birthday.

It was a truly wonderful Thanksgiving.  The only thing that would have made it more perfect was if my sister-in-law, Nancy could have been with us as well as my other nephew, Shawn and his family.... and of course... Tiffany, Ed and our granddaughter, KC.  If our son, Jon and his Sarah could have been with us, it would have been miraculous since he's still in Bangladesh.  However, just knowing everybody is happy and content this Thanksgiving is something we are more than grateful for.

I hope your day was equally wonderful....

Now on to Black Friday!