Posts tagged Holidays

We have eaten all the turkey, stuffing, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, gravy, and vegetables we can handle. We’ve played a few card games, and now everyone is relaxing. Ryan is fixing his sister’s computer, his mom and I are watching TV, and Lisa and his dad are hanging around here somewhere.

The pumpkin cheesecake with gingersnap crust that I made tastes good, but it got REALLY tall in the pan, and then I had to bake it a full 20-25 minutes longer than the recipe called for, so the outside got dark, and the crust kind of fused into a kind of gingersnap caramel candy. I’m not sure what I did wrong…perhaps the wrong sized cheesecake pan? And next time I’ll try putting it in a water bath to keep the oven moist. Any expert cheesecake bakers out there with ideas of what might have gone wrong? It still tastes good, though, so I’ll definitely try it again.

This year I am especially thankful for family. I know that’s a total cliche, but every day I am reminded of how lucky Ryan and I are. We get along very well with each-other’s families. We both come from large families that are super-supportive, and the older we get the more we realize that that isn’t as common as it should be. And this is our first Thanksgiving as a married couple, which kind of puts an emphasis on the family part of it.

Of course I’m also thankful for other things that are less sappy. For instance:

• Facebook, and it’s ability to let me keep up on people (some might say stalk, but I don’t like to label things)
• Blogs – I get great recipes, read different perspectives on the news, and have a fabulous time living vicariously through people. Plus, some of them are very educational! I swear!
• Our apartment – it might not be anything fancy, and we could definitely “use” more space, but it’s the perfect size and cost for us at this point, and I LOVE living next door to our friends. We can wander back and forth, visiting, drinking wine (or beer or pop or whatever), and just hanging out. It’s awesome.
• Having a washer and dryer in our apartment building – we just got this about a month or 2 ago, and I am so so happy that we no longer have to transport all our laundry and the detergent and everything else to the laundromat. Also, the cost savings….my God, the cost savings….
• Books (and by extension, the public library) – I’ve really been on a reading kick since we got married. I think I was overwhelmed with not having any spare time to read for a while, so now I’ve been devouring whatever book I could get my hands on. And so I’ve been spending a lot of time at the library.
• Recently the city of Duluth had to make some big budget costs, so they’ve been asking people to volunteer there. I decided that volunteering at the library is pretty much the PERFECT job for me, so I signed up. So now, every Monday and Thursday I’ll be spending 2 1/2 hours there after work reshelving books in the non-fiction section. And I’m thankful for that too – I’ve been wanting to do some volunteer work, and this seems like it will be the perfect thing.

There are many other things I’m thankful for (um, our FRIENDS, for instance), but it’s late and apparently Ryan’s mom and I are going to try to brave Kohls tomorrow morning to pick up some scent diffusers for gifts for the people she supervises. I’m just hoping to make it through the experience without punching someone (Just kidding – I’m all bark and no bite, in case you haven’t noticed). We aren’t heading out until about 8, though. We aren’t THAT hardcore.

Happy thanksgiving, everyone!