Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was pretty good for us. We stayed at home and shared thanksgiving dinner with our friends and neighbors, the Sperleins. Then for dessert we were able to have more friends and neighbors over. It was really nice. The Sperleins tackled the turkey, and when I told them a few weeks ago that I didn't like turkey all that much because it usually is dry and tasteless, they took that as a personal challenge and produced a wonderfully seasoned, moist turkey. It was great. I made side dishes, and a couple of desserts. Culinary successes of the day (well, I think all of them were a success, but the ones that I think stand out):

• Cranberry and spice poached pears, mainly because I had never made poached pears before, had to make them for 10 people, and only had 10 pears, so no room for errors... oh yeah, and I liked them. I will be logging that 'recipe' away for future use.
• My roasted vegetables. I love roasted vegetables, and the particularly good one this time around were the fennel bulbs, parsnips, yams, and Yukon potatoes (because roasted potatoes are always good). And yes I did say fennel bulbs. Evan was highly skeptical - I called him a "Doubting Thomas" - but he was definitely won over in the end. You should all try it.
  
• Eton Mess, because meringues, whipped cream, and mixed berries, in any combination, is always a good thing.
• My homemade meringues. As many of you will know, making meringues at high altitude is a recipe for disaster... or at least flat, weepy, chewy meringues. If you don't get absolutely right you end up with wet marshmallows. Gross. So, undeterred after one really failed attempt two days before, I threw caution into the wind and spent Thanksgiving morning whisking egg whites and sugar, and praying that my meringues would work, because if it didn't, I had no back-up option. Fortunately, my crash courses in the theories of cooking at high altitude and meringue-making proved very helpful, and I was able to create a recipe that produced perfect (if I might say so myself) meringues. Mum, I hope you are sufficiently impressed.

On the Friday we drove out to Denver for my freshman-roommate's wedding. We knew that our car would probably not like the drive through the mountain pass in Vail, especially if there was snow, so we elected to rent a car for the trip. Since it was Thanksgiving weekend, however, no-one had returned their rentals come Friday morning and all that was left (from the rental places all through Utah and SL County) was a Chevy Silverado. It had an extended cab so we could comfortably fit everyone in, but even though we didn't have to pay any extra for it, we were none too thrilled about the (lack of) gas economy. Evan kicked up a fuss, and scored a free tank of gas from the rental place. Awesome.

Taking a break in The-Middle-Of-Nowhere-Ville, Utah

The drive was uneventful until we started hitting the mountains in Colorado, at which point it started to snow. Hard. I am glad we had a 4 x 4, if for no other reason than we could pull off the road to take care of kids, etc, without fear of getting stuck in the snow. Traffic was awful, and crawling, and the roads were barely visable and icy. I lost count of how many accidents we saw.

Really?

We made it safely into Denver, which is more than others who were traveling out for the wedding could say, and in reasonable time, too. The wedding the next day was wonderful, and I am so glad that we were able to make the trip out for Lorie.


In typical Colorado fashion it snowed pretty much all day, when the forecast was for clear, sunny skies in the mid-40's. Navigating icy walkways in stilettos has now become a specialty of mine. I would love to have taken pictures of Oliver in the snow, but he slept through everything.


Lena loved it, naturally, and spent most of the time at the temple treading on the pansy beds covered in snow, and throwing snowballs into the fountain with Dad.