Happy Thanksgiving!

We shared a Thanksgiving feast with our friends today. Hardy and Judy hosted the feast, and everyone brought something to share. Of course we had a delicious spread and plenty of conversation. I think the most unusual food was the persimmon pudding that Jan brought.

Jan and Steve's daughter ,Cheryl, and her husband Curt are visiting from Wisconsin, so they brought along some Wisconsin cheese and summer sausage for the feast. The little black stray cat hanging around the Pottinger front door was quite partial to the sausage Hardy shared with her.

 Chris and Anara and Shawn called this evening to wish us a happy Thanksgiving. They're on the coast, celebrating the holiday with Shawn's family. They were all really impressed with the delicious pumpkin cheesecake with salted caramel sauce.


Shawn, Chris, and Anara on Winema Beach

Ken talked with his sister, Romaine, today. She had good news on the health front. Her doctors tell her that the mass in her lungs is gone and the one in her abdomen has gotten smaller. Evidently the strong chemo she's been taking has really helped.

I missed a call from Edward today. I'll try to get back to him tomorrow.

We got up early this morning and started to work on dinner. We made two kinds of dressing, the traditional bread stuffing my mom used to make and some Pepperidge Farm cornbread stuffing. Most of the bread stuffing went into the turkey to be infused with the turkey juices. Then the bird went into the roaster oven, which sat on the counter in the Texas room. Later we put the cornbread dressing and the overflow bread dressing in our oven to bake.

When the turkey was done, it wasn't well browned, probably because it was too big and touched the lid. I decided to try to brown the bird in our oven, which required lifting it out of the roaster and putting it on a large biscuit pan. Ken and I had to coordinate a lot and managed to get all the food together and ready to go in time to take our morning walk (well actually, it was after noon, but that's a technicality).

In the midst of all this, we heard a repeated pop. It turned out that the electronic ignitors on the cooktop were firing. We tried everything to try to get it to stop. I took apart the burner tops and knobs and cleaned everything. Ken tried to find the circuit breaker that controlled the cooktop, which turned out to control the microwave and oven also. We read the cooktop manual and tried to locate the plug to unplug it. We looked under the sink and removed the bottom drawer next to the oven, but didn't find any plugs. We did find some measuring spoons that had fallen out the back of the drawer. It looks like we'd have to remove the oven to get to the outlet where the cooktop and oven are plugged in.

Then as quickly as the ignitor misfiring had begun, it stopped. We're hoping the problem won't recur.