Thanksgiving cooking

I'm in charge of the cranberry salad this year for the Regier Thanksgiving. I'm using my mother's recipe, which is a two-day process. The cranberries must be chopped and mixed with sugar and tiny marshmallows for 8 hours or overnight. Then chopped apples, raspberry gelatin, and whipped topping are added. After that another time period to chill and gel that salad.

I started this salad yesterday morning, because it was a large batch and I wanted to give it enough time for the second chill to be complete.

Making the salad made me think of other foods I'm hungry for. While I love the warmer seasons, I do look forward to soup season. There just isn't a better comfort food than soup. So I decided to also make borscht. That involves a lot of chopping as well. Meat and potatoes need to be cubed and cabbage and onions chopped.

I'm pretty slow at chopping. Seems like after this many years I would have figured out how to be faster. For some things, I use the small food processor from my blender, but not for cabbage or potatoes or meat, or the apples for the salad.

It was a big salad, and a big pot of soup, so it took a lot longer than I expected because of my slow pace. Somehow I also got a lot more dishes dirty than I expected. Even so, it was fun, and felt like meaningful work.

Now all of it is done, ready to eat, with the kitchen clean, and that feels good.

Later...

We had a lovely Thanksgiving with Chuck's family this evening. I enjoyed sitting at a different table than usual this year and getting to have conversations with the younger generation. Someone suggested drawing numbers for a seating arrangement to mix things up at a future gathering. That could be a lot of fun.