I am here to wish everyone a very Happy Thanksgiving.  Enjoy today and rest a little because starting tomorrow we have the big rush to Christmas.

We are spending Thanksgiving at Becca’s house.  Patty and I are doing our part to make the festive day full and easier on Becca rather than make her do all the work.  I started a week ago by making the brown and serve rolls and freezing them so all we have to do is pop them in the over when she takes her turkey out.  Then yesterday I baked the ham and the potatoes.  Patty brought me the ham Tuesday night after work and I gave her some vegetables to cook for Thanksgiving.  We have this thing really fine tuned now after doing it for five years in a row.  It was a very nice partly boned ham so I used cloves and an apple glaze made with apple sauce, corn syrup and mustard.  It really needed a good glaze because there was no fat on it at all and I didn’t want it to dry out.  It came out great so I cut off the little bone that was in it and put that aside for Patty to make pea soup out of, and I cut the side pieces of ham off the bone for us for dinner yesterday, we had to taste it didn’t we?   Had to make sure it was good enough for Thanksgiving, and it was very good!!  The large part  of the ham is left in one big chunk but now it fits into the big crock pot and you would never know there was another piece on the side.  That I have put into the crock pot on low and it should be all warm and ready to slice for dinner at one.  Chris always had ham for Thanksgiving but Becca always had turkey so now we compromise and have both.  Becca is cooking a 22 pound turkey.  Why so big for only 9 of us?  Because Becca wants lots of left over.  She will sure have that so I will try and talk  her into freezing some dinners, she will never get to eat all that food before it goes bad and we don’t need anyone getting sick before Christmas.  The baked potatoes I scooped out of the baked potatoes that I had cut in half lengthwise.  I whipped the potato with milk and butter and parsley.  If we had been eating them that day I would have added a couple eggs too but where they were to be refrigerated over night and then warmed up slowly and kept warm I didn’t want any raw egg in them.  I refilled the potato skins and put them into the large electric fry pan on a bed of lettuce and then after being in the refrigerator over night they are warming up slowly.  The lettuce keeps the skins from drying out and getting hard or sticking to the coils.  I think it will work fine and if it does that is what I will do for the Christmas Eve party so I can relax and open presents with the crowd and have dinner all ready when we are done.

This morning first thing I made up the frosting for the gingerbread house that I made on Tuesday and Wednesday.  It took three sheets 11 by 17 to cut out all the pieces of the house.  First thing I had to use the frosting to draw in the windows and doors using red sprinkles to show the red lights from inside the house through the windows.  When those dried we started putting the house together.  I had to use the frosting to hold the pieces of the house together.  We got the sides all together and on the base with the four posts inside to fold the sides together and it worked out great.  Then we let it set until after breakfast.  I should have known it was going too smoothly.  After breakfast we put the roof on, it all went alright until after holding it for 5 minutes we let go and the roof just slipped right off.  We tried again and this time propped them up with my spice cans which fit under the roof just right and that seems to have worked and is now setting.  I do hope the frosting acts as a good cement as it is supposed to do so the roof stays on.

This is the back of the house you can see the spice cans of each side and I haven’t had the nerve to remove them yet.  When we get to Becca, in about an hour, I will add frosting on the roof and ground and the kids will decorate them as I did around the windows.  

This is the front of the house.  The kids will decorate this also and the ginger bread people that are just propped up there in front at the moment.  I did not put the chimney on and may not as that puts more stress on the roof and Florida kids don’t notice a chimney anyways was most houses here don’t have chimneys.   Now if the roof remains on I am also set for Thanksgiving.   Have a great day.  Love to everyone!