Some Rinkys get to go to the Carribean, some to Dollywood, and some get to wrestle with 20 lbs of dead meat early in the morning. If you're hoping for a travelog, skip this thread 'cause I didn't get any farther than the kitchen this weekend...

...yep I got to cook the entire Thanksgiving meal this year. This is quite an acomplishment for me. In my family we have a former professional chef, someone who demonstrates and sells kitchenware for a living, a Martha Stewart clone, and three down-home cooks who can make 50 cents worth of macaroni taste like heaven. Me, I'm the one who is usually told to bring the celery sticks to these family functions because, well, not too much can go wrong with celery sticks. But somehow this year, due to one thing or another, it came down to me and the turkey.

I found myself actually looking forward to the challenge, and asked the family if they wanted anything special (besides the usual standard yams, stuffing, etc.). The adults hastily answered "Nothing fancy!", but one younger family member (unaware of my cooking reputation) innocently asked for sticky buns. Well okay. Unfortunately the grocery did not have ready made sticky buns so I decided make them from scratch. I felt terribly creative buying yeast.

By the way, have you ever noticed that when you are feeling creative in one area of your life, suddenly the gates of creativity open in other areas too? I somehow decided that amid all this food preparation that this was the perfect time to reupholster two chairs. I didn't need these chairs to seat people at dinner, they're in a room we don't use much, and I'd had the fabric for close to a year and had never done anything with it...but RIGHT THEN seemed the *perfect* time to start a new project. Go figure.

Anyway, it all went pretty well after the smoke cleared from the Sticky Bun Incident. (Memo to self: 1. discard bakeware with unobtrusive hole in bottom 2. investigate whether Grinshy can somehow be made to feel responsible for this. Running low on Mc Donald's certificates). So I am sitting here feeling pretty well satisified with two half-upholstered chairs, a refrigerator full of leftovers, and thankful that I was able to return the favor of cooking for my family this year for a change. :-)

koala"bring on the iron chef!"mom

or

koala"noodly glop? I invented noodly glop!"mom