Thanks Giving Scramble

We're coming up on Thanksgiving and every year, there are fundamental questions concerning the holiday.  With ten children, one of my friends quipped, every day is Thanksgiving, but it's not true, because with ten kids, fixing a meal everyone likes seldom includes all the trimmings of any themed dinner. 

However, with the holidays, I impose.  Not with cruelty mind you, but I do have some this is happening type thinking with respect to fixing the meal or I will wind up with the equivalent of a Charley Brown Thanksgiving, with popcorn, pasta, bacon, eggs, chocolate milk, grapes and baloney or meatball sandwiches. 

The main course...we have a turkey...and we also have chickens.  I find cooking four cornish game hens plus a turkey means everyone is happy and I don't hear, "I don't like turkey." which is a sentence that sets my teeth on edge.   It also means everyone gets a drumstick who wants it, and white or dark enough to feel sated.

Potatoes and stuffing.  We do both. Why? Because this is Thanksgiving. If you're on a diet, go run, or make the salad, but I'm making yumminess and I'm mainly concerned about seeing smiles. 

Cranberries...I don't care if anyone else eats them. I like them. They're on the menu. 

Green beans.  I believe in having vegetables. I believe in serving vegetables most of them eat.  I also believe it should not tax me to be virtuous ergo...4 minutes in the microwave for a signature green vegetable...we're good. 

Everything else for the dinner table is negotiable...and dependent upon whoever is volunteering to cook.   Case in point...

Dessert...pumpkin pie, pecan pie, and apple dumplins with ice cream and whipped cream or whatever the bakers in my house feel the need to create. 

What are we watching?   Here again, is an imposition...it's the Macy's day parade and football. 
What are we doing when we're not cooking?   We're either playing cards or football, more often cards than football.

But the big question, the one that everyone wonders...who cleans up after the turkey coma?  I'll get back to you...