Thanksgiving was wonderful this year. We kept a fire burning all day, shared good company, conversation and of course the wine. Despite finding out a day before that there would be 12 for dinner instead of the expected 8, with all the side dishes included in the equation, an 11 lb turkey was *just* enough for twelve people. I needed to go out the next day to buy a couple turkey breasts to last as long as all of the other left overs. We had brined the turkey over night in a witches brew of ingredients and deep fried it for our dinner. We had the usual suspects: mountains of mashed potatoes, various veggies, two kinds of stuffing and two kinds of sweet potatoes (I'm partial to the mashed version topped with marshmallows browned under the broiler). I wouldn't have made my mini-cornbread muffins had I known my mom baked cornbread. In the five previous years of hosting the family dinner, I just opted for the canned gelatinous cranberry sauce, which hardly anyone ate. This year, I made home made cranberry sauce and it disappeared. I needed to make a fresh batch the next day to also last along side the rest of the left overs. The recipe? One bag of fresh cranberries, 1 cup sugar, 1/2 cup orange juice, 1/2 cup water --- boil until the berries start popping, mash them a little and then refrigerate. Super tart and tasty. Even the nephews were fun, aside from the five year old Colin continually wiping his runny nose on his hands, "Colin? Do you need a tissue?" "No," as he wipes his nose again. I just wanted to sanitize everything in my house that he touched after they left. Michael, the two year old, kept stealing pieces of the (apparently non-toxic) Rhipsalis plant on my kitchen table, stuffing them into his mouth and happily proclaiming, "Yummy!" I tried a bite myself, the plant tastes like sweet green peppers, although I wouldn't necessarily say it was yummy.