In sickness and in health!

The GOOD part about being home sick is the fact that Wednesday is Columbo day! Si! And also it means that I get to sit on my couch covered in blankets and read cookbooks all day- (Madhur Jaffrey's Flavours of India is my current favorite).

Thinking about food (which is basically what I am always thinking about) reminds me that a week from tomorrow is Thanksgiving: aka my FAVORITE holiday, and alas, one of the worst things about living abroad. I fucking LOVE Thanksgiving. Cranberry sauce, stuffing with bits of sage, sausage, chestnuts, oysters (believe me, it is good) and of course zee turkey. And the mashed potatoes, which have always been a personal point of pride. And the pies! No pumpkin pie for me. Wah.

I thought about having a mini Thanksgiving meal here (maybe not on the Day itself, but on the weekend) but it's not as fun without more than 2 people, and the only other person sympathetic to my plight will be enjoying a REAL Thanksgiving dinner himself in the States. You bastard.

I will make a pie. I will make an apple pie, methinks. And I may make a small chicken in lieu of a huge turkey, and some stuffing on the side, maybe. But it's not the same, is it?

When I was little and we used to go to my grandparents' house in MA, we would have a huge dinner, with about 10 people, 4 kinds of pie (apple, pecan, pumpkin, mince), a 20 lb turkey, and at each plate there would be a little chocolate turkey in foil. Awesome! We would also have a lot of family tension and uncomfortable shoes, and often I would have to wear a red corduroy dress, or a velvet headband or something, but I was always the youngest there so I got away with murder (or, say, locking my brother in the closet while I searched his bag for candy. No dice). Ah, Youth.

Then after the meal, we would go for a nice long walk through Williamstown and out into the country (and, incidentally, past the place where I was later to attend high school) and get really freezing and then run home to my grandparents' house to eat leftover pie.

Which brings me to the crux of the whole situation: leftovers, and lack thereof. If there was any way for people who will be at home for Thanksgiving to send me leftovers, time travel, dry ice, whatever, I would do it. I would pay ANYTHING (nearly) to have a slice of day-old pie and a turkey sandwich with a bit of cranberry sauce and stuffing on it. Please, please pity me.

Nope. On the day when normally I would be stuffing my face with forkfuls of homemade goodness, I will be most likely eating a Boots Meal Deal and bitching about the weather. Join me!