Citizen of the World

Our Thanksgiving was really fun. We invited over Matt's cousins, aunt, and friends to dinner and they brought the desserts. On Wednesday, Matt started cooking around 4:00 and finished around 2:00 with clean up. He also prepped things that needed to cook on Thursday. I set up the entire house, the coffee/utensil area, the dessert/hors d'oeuvres area, and the bar, as well as the dining room and seating area, making sure that the bathrooms were clean and well-stocked with toilet paper, tissues, hand napkins (for drying hands), and breath mints.
Dining Room

Dessert Table

Living Room for hors d'oeuvres

Centerpiece of dining room table

On Thursday, we got up a little late, but everything worked out well. Matt was slowly becoming a tempered "Holiday Mom" because of the time limitations, but we kept to our tasks, and everything went off without a hitch!

Our menu
Hors d'oeuvres: two fruited cheeses & crackers, chicken lollipops, stuffed mushrooms, antipasto, and nuts.
1st Course: Poached D'Anjou pears with cranberry/almond stuffing (pictured below)
2nd Course: Escarole & appricot meatball soup (pictured below)
3rd Course: De-boned turkey, buttered mashed potatoes, carrots, roasted corn, green bean casserole (my recipe - Matt executed), heirloom sweet potatoes (pictured below), gravy, homemade (I made them!) and canned (jellied) cranberry sauce (yes, with the ridges!), pumpkin biscuits, and yeast rolls.
Dessert Course: Pumpkin pie, apple/cranberry pie, toasted coconut cake, pumpkin cupcakes, carrot cake cupcakes with cream cheese icing. (all pictured above on the dessert table)

For the first time I think in all the dinners we've hosted over the years, someone brought us a fruit basket! I don't believe anyone's ever brought a fruit basket till this year. Some people don't like them because they are the "last minute" thoughts, but, frankly, I think they can be pretty and I like fruit. We don't have a problem with them, but I've heard others finding them lack luster. This basket given to us yesterday was very pretty and I'm very happy for the basket - in the shape of a turkey! Thing is, there were no bananas, although the little tag said there were supposed to be. AND, just out of curiosity, since the bananas were missing, I weighed the grapes, which were supposed to be a pound. They were 1 ounce under a pound! So, I guess the moral of the fruit basket is, it's best to make your own as a gift rather than rely on the pre-packaged ones; you won't always get what you expect!

Our Thanksgiving was a success, it was fun, and we're full!! I don't think we'll want anymore food for a while. Except for tonight when we have a stuffed pepper at Bellmonte's in Asbury Park!! Looking forward to that! And a bowl of soup.

Have a great weekend, everyone! We're going to be at Santa Saturday, again - traditional party after Thanksgiving for 10+ years now!

We've already started our Thanksgiving with the Fordham Thanksgiving - Matt's college friends - this weekend. This was the 21st year of their tradition and it's a lot of fun. I decorated the house and set up the festive atmosphere while Matt cooked everything. It was REALLY good and everyone got take-home containers FULL of food for lunch tomorrow. I also made little ornaments for each couple (6 couples total) to take home to their families and kids.

Matt's friends are so loving and caring about each other. They each share practically the same stories every year, and it's fun to see their joy in their collective history.

This year, Matt and I thought we had all the planning and preparations in place and we were ahead of the game. I even had the forethought of getting our cleaning lady over yesterday to really dust, vacuum, mop. We all worked today and did a great job! The place looked really good until I started to dress the table (which we set up in the living room, since our dining room table seats only 6 people comfortably). We always set up a buffet on the dining room table. The tablecloths REALLY needed to be ironed; if I hadn't had to take that extra 45 minutes or so (three tablecloths) to do that, everything would have been fine. If everyone had come that was invited, we would have had a total of 21, but coming and going we had 15, including us.

Here are some pictures:

The ornaments:
Matt - to remember next year how he seasoned the turkeys - first in the pan in his hand, then dumping them into the deeper pan for roasting:
Turkeys de-boned - without seasoning, with seasoning, the seasonings, and the bones for gravy stock in the pressure cooker:
Entrance to the condo:
The food (top left clockwise - carrots, roasted de-boned turkey, sausage/apricot/sage stuffing, roasted white & orange pumpkin with butternut squash, regular and truffle-buttered mashed potatoes, and buttered almond steamed green beans):
Matt's chicken lollipops (from the Jacques Pepin chicken de-boning video):
Table spread with ornaments, pumpkin candles (not lit), and decorations:
This is a video of our troop before eating with the traditional toast. Our friend, Greg, always says the toast - even when his wife was having their first when he called to say the prayer and toast:

I've felt so disconnected recently because we've been so busy. Each week, I posted stuff on eBay, closed sales throughout the week and applied for jobs. Almost every Thursday (except for the two Thanksgiving weeks), we hosted Game Night, which is always fun. Here's a run-down of other things:

Week 0: Made cranberry sauce and canned it. Made gourmet white wine vinegars as party favors for our upcoming Thanksgiving Dinners.

Week 1: Saw God of Carnage. Met all the actors (including James Gandolfini - SQUEEE! But our picture is crap.) after the show, which was good, but the play's dialog was a bit arduous and outdated. Had dinner at Nanking on 6th Ave - good enough. Oh, and we saw Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman coming out of the neighboring theater, too!! BONUS! Then prepped for the annual Fordham Thanksgiving Dinner (Matt's fellow alumni from Fordham - this was year 19, I think).


Week 2: Redid the lighting in our hallways and closets ourselves. Fixed a lot of little bothersome things around the house in preparation for the Fordham and real Thanksgiving Dinners. Changed most all of the pictures in the house. Posted stuff on eBay and closed sales throughout the week and applied for jobs. Had dinner at Casa Lever off Park Ave., which was very tasty, but WAY, WAY, WAY overpriced. Moved furniture around for the Fordham Thanksgiving. We took a friend's mother out to dinner at McCormick & Schmick's since he was in Australia for a couple of weeks.


Week 3: Went grocery and home-accent shopping for the Thanksgiving Dinners. Redid my (the main) bathroom with lots of decor and changed things around - including the light feature above my and Matt's bathroom sinks - huge deal. We'd been talking about doing this for about 3 years, and finally did it!

Hosted the Fordham Thanksgiving at the house and it went off great!! Only hitch - Matt had to keep cooking the turkey till much later than he had planned. But it was all good. 16 people with two turkeys, appetizers, and dessert. The wine and Steve-made cocktails flowed and everyone was happy. I made doggie/gift bags for everyone, which still barely made a dent in the food Matt cooked. Awesome!


Week 4: Recuperated from the Fordham Thanksgiving dinner and moved furniture back to original spots. Prepped for the family Thanksgiving dinner. Redecorated fully for the family's meal. And by "family" I mean Matt's aunt and cousin; his sister's family went somewhere else and MISSED OUT! Real Thanksgiving went off wonderfully and his aunt and cousin loved everything. They loved all the food (of course - Matt's a fantastic cook!) and took time to notice all the decorative elements I put around, which made me feel so good. It was great.


Then we took off to Asbury Park, NJ, for the annual Santa Saturday fund raiser - always the Saturday after Thanksgiving. That was essentially 2.5 days. Had dinner at a great place in Asbury Park called Bellmonte's. The stuffed pepper app brought a tear to my eye it was so tasty. Santa Saturday was so much fun, and later than night there was an event at the Stone Pony (yes, the Bruce Springsteen Stone Pony). We coordinated a birthday dinner for a friend and the next morning a birthday brunch for the same friend at the Salt Water Cafe - great place for brunch.


Week 5: Recuperated from Thanksgiving and Santa Saturday. Cleaned the house - again. Went to see Ragtime after having dinner at Kellari Taverna on 44th. Took lots of pics around 6th Ave with all the festive lights and later around Time's Square. Ended up in the Village for drinks. Then on Saturday (WITH THE 1ST SNOW!!!), we attended the annual Bloomfield Holiday Pajama Party! That was so much fun. Started around 7:00 and ended around 3:00 AM the next morning.


After recuperating last Sunday, we went to see a cabaret - the Last Piece of Cake. Two friends of our, Tom and Vinnie, have been doing their "Cake" act in Manhattan for about 9 years, and they retired Monday. The Duplex was PACKED solid. At the end of the show, Tom proposed to his partner on stage. It was so sweet, and Brian (of course) said, "Yes!" On the way out of the show down the stairs, I ran into the lead singer from Ragtime and got a picture with him. Awesome guy, great smile, and HUGE biceps (yep, I squeezed them...).





And that brings us up to this week as I'm redecorating for Christmas. Started in the dining room already, and here's the Christmas chandelier I put together over the dining room table. Matt's started on the Christmas cookies and he's done one biscotti and the pecan tarts so far. YUM!!


This is the chandelier.

What I see and read about the world's issues this morning all pale in comparison to how much we have yet to do before this dinner gets off the ground and is successful (which we WILL pull off!). Matt's annual pre-Thanksgiving Fordham Thanksgiving Dinner is tonight. We've been prepping for this all week long and here it is. We've cleaned, we've cooked, we've prepped, we've made lists, we've BOUGHT and BOUGHT, and we've checked through everything. I have to go pick up the desserts, some extra decorations (gonna look so gay and pretty! - all fall colors), AND a 45 cup coffee maker because Matt's sister lost the power cord to the one we had! UGH! We made THAT discovery at 3:00 AM this morning just after I vacuumed a little. Gotta run and Matt's gotta scream at his sister...

Till later. I will post pics of the decor and gay ambiance.