Before Thanksgiving

We are hosting Thanksgiving at our house this year, and I have so much to do!

Agenda:
1. Journal:
My theme this month has been abundance (which you would know if I had managed to post on the full moon). My goal has been to focus my attention on what I really want for myself and for others in my life, and to remember that I am filled with an abundance of blessings each day. I also added a goal to create something each day (bake bread, work on a gift, write a blog entry, and so on), which has been fun and fulfilling!
 
I made my own little Abundance Journal, with four sections:

1. Morning: Expand my Vision- 

• What do I want for myself & others?
• Morning mantra.

2. Noon: Abundance Prompts- Ask myself:

• What am I thankful for in this moment?
• How am I living my vision?

3. Afternoon: Create Something-

4. Evening: Abundance Journal-

• What filled me with light?
• How is the world fuller?

After writing in this journal for the last three weeks, I feel profoundly grateful for my life, and well prepared for Thanksgiving. (I'm already planning a journal page something like it for Advent, perhaps on the theme of generosity and kindness.)

2. Divide up the cooking:

Everyone in my family has a Thanksgiving specialty- Wade makes rolls, my son makes cranberry sauce, and my daughter makes lemon meringue pie. I make the turkey, the stuffing, the gravy, and the pumpkin pies (at least two, because we need one for breakfast on Friday). Our friends who are joining us will fill in the potatoes, yams, and etc.

3. Cook the pumpkins:
The secret to good pumpkin pie is to use fresh pumpkin. We harvested only four small pie pumpkins this year- all from the volunteers that I found happily growing in my compost pile. (I moved them to the garden with a shovel, and they did fine, but the harvest was small.)

Ready for the oven.

I cook the pumpkins several days early, to see how much I get. After chopping and cleaning the pumpkins, I baked them at 350ºF until they were soft. Then I scooped them out of the skins and put the pumpkin in a container in the refrigerator for later. I got 7 cups, almost enough for two large pies, so I'll need to buy one more pumpkin.

4. Shopping:

• turkey
• bread, celery, and chicken stock for stuffing
• pumpkins and whipped cream
• beer and cider

We got a 15 lbs. bird- for 8 people; that's more then we need, but we have some big eaters, and I want leftovers!

5. Clean House:
Especially clean out the refrigerator!

6. Plan some fun activities:
No one comes to my house without expecting an activity or two...

One idea I have is a table talk game where we pass a bowl of questions around the table to stimulate some interesting conversation. I found the questions here and modified them for our group. We will have 16 questions (2 each), and some rules to make it easier for the shy people in our party: After you read your question you can pass it on to anyone else who offers to answer it, but you do have to choose one question to answer eventually. The second question is optional.

7. Make the pies:

My pumpkin pie recipe-

Ingredients:

• 4 c. pumpkin
• 1/2 c. milk
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/2 c. sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 tsp. each ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg

Makes one large pie-

1- Make the pastry and line the pie plate. Preheat the oven to 450ºF.

2- Put half of the pumpkin and half of the milk in the blender with one egg and blend until pureed.

3- Pour into a mixer bowl, and repeat with the second batch.

This is enough for two pies.

4- Add sugar, salt, and spices to the mixer bowl and mix on low, then pour into pie shell.

5- Bake at 450ºF for 10 minutes, then lower the heat to 375ºF and bake for 45 minutes.