I hope everyone who celebrates Thanksgiving had a super duper one, and I hope that everyone who does not celebrate Thanksgiving had a grand November 25th anyway.
This year was my first ever year hosting Thanksgiving. My mom drove up from Southern California, my little sister Booger came over from college, and we three had a feast.
My holiday started on Wednesday, when Booger and I made some awesome late-night Thanksgiving decorations. Remember a while ago when I joked that I’m likely to develop an addiction to art supplies? Yeah...on my way to get Booger from school, I stopped by a Michael’s and spent way more than could ever be appropriate on felt and glue and buttons and pipe cleaners and thread and cloth and toothpicks and styrofoam balls of various sizes.
DEBT, HERE I COME.
But it was totally worth it because we made some fantastic place mats, complete with hand-turkeys, hand-dinosaurs, and hand-octopuses; and some crazy-looking turkey centerpieces.
I woke up early-ish Thursday morning to go to the grocery store to pick up my pre-cooked, pre-packaged Turkey dinner. I am as far from a chef as it is possible to be, and there was no way I was going to risk Thanksgiving by trying to actually cook anything, so I ordered a dinner package from the local grocery store, where I headed Thursday morning. I prepared myself for horrible lines of stressed and frantic people trying to purchase all of their forgotten Thanksgiving supplies.
Nope, the grocery store was pretty much empty.
I was pretty sure I was supposed to go over to the deli area to pick up my dinner, but there was no line to tell me for sure if I was in the right place, so I asked a guy who was rolling some sushi where I should go, and he shouted for someone to come help me out.
The guy who came out asked for my name, which I gave, and then flipped through his folder of orders.
Then he flipped through his folder of orders again, a little more slowly this time.
Then he flipped through his folder of orders again, rubbing each page carefully between his fingers to make sure none of them were sticking together.
Meanwhile, I stood at the counter, frozen in horror.
The guy said he couldn’t find my name, and called a lady over to help. She looked through the folder, flipped over a purple divider, and pulled out an order form with my name on it.
Apparently my order was for Wednesday, not Thursday.
(I would just like to say that I am absolutely certain that I said Thanksgiving Day on the phone when I placed my order for that dinner, because I first said Wednesday, but then remembered that I didn’t have my work schedule yet and didn’t know whether I would be working on the 24th or not, and so I said, “You know what, let’s change it to 9:00 Thursday morning, since I know I don’t work Thanksgiving Day.” So it’s all totally their fault.)
(But it doesn’t even matter anyway, because they still had my turkey in the back. No harm, yes fowl.)
“Don’t worry,” the lady told me (I must have looked like I was going to collapse). “Your dinner wasn’t going to go anywhere.”
So I happily took my meal and drove back to my apartment, where I broke open my box and took a look at the included instructions.
“Place breast side up in roasting pan.”
...
“Roasting pan?”
I took a look in the drawers and cupboards in my kitchen and didn’t see anything that screamed “roasting pan.”
“Whatever, I’ll just use a cookie sheet instead.”
...
Luckily my trusty friends Alarm Bells started going off in my head, and they politely informed me that using a cookie sheet as a roasting pan would probably create more of a disaster than I was prepared to deal with my very first time hosting Thanksgiving.
So I put the cookie sheet away, got back into my car, and drove back to the grocery store to pick up a roasting pan.
(Actually, I drove to a different grocery store, since I was a little embarrassed about the fact that I clearly had absolutely no idea what I was doing this holiday day and I didn’t want people who knew that I was making a pre-cooked turkey to see that I didn’t even know how to warm up said pre-cooked turkey without multiple trips to their store.)
I also picked up a baster, since I knew they have something to do with turkeys and they were right next to the roasting pans anyway.
We didn’t use the baster.
Apparently precooked turkeys don’t need one.
Whatever.
ANYWAY, about that time my mom arrived (she left our house at 3:00 in the morning to get to my place in time for Thanksgiving--THANKS, MA!) so she was able to help me with the overwhelming task of heating up all the different foods included in my box in the right order so they were all ready to be served at approximately the same time.
With the exception of some mashed potato-related troubles, our dinner-heating went pretty smoothly, and soon we were stuffing ourselves with our delicious meal.
I think my first time throwing a Thanksgiving was mostly a success!
There were a few awesome individuals who were sadly missing from our mini-feast.
But thanks was given for them from afar, and I’m confident they had a good one, even devoid of my clearly awesome company.
Hope you all had a super one too! <3
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