My Thanksgiving to-dos today!
{No post next week! Enjoy the day!}
Today I have on my list some things to make me feel more peaceful as I’m cooking and baking:
Finish making a couple of beds upstairs (we are expecting nine out-of-towners!) and giving the rooms final touches. I’m not the greatest at this, but I try!Dust and vacuum the living room. The bathrooms and kitchen will get their sparkle and shine closer to Thursday. I got most of the cleaning done last week (with help from a high school girl, the daughter of friends, who is just great).Bake some bread I mixed up yesterday. We left the house at 3:30 and were gone all evening, so I put my mostly risen dough in the fridge, and shaped it this morning. Usually I let it rise and shape it and then put it in the fridge overnight, but this will work too.It’s not over-proved, it just rose up to the shelf above and so started going over the edges of the bowl!
I left it out for a bit more than an hour. Nice hot oven — 475°F with the fan on.
A tray of boiling water on the top rack, and two thick stainless steel baking trays that fit in my oven the long way facing me, so I was able to bake all four loaves at once.
I put ice cubes all around them too, and sprayed them as I put them in.
Finish off this squash. I baked it the other evening. It sits out just fine on the cool stone.
(In this post, you can scroll down for the method, which makes peeling a breeze rather than the issue preventing people from enjoying butternut squash, which is the best squash). This past week I bought up many of these squashes at the grocery store. They were a great price and come from a local farm. They are a kind of butternut that is just so incredibly delicious, and they keep in the pantry all winter! I will probably freeze some of what I cooked here, and serve the rest with plenty of butter and salt, a little pepper, and a big bunch of fried sage leaves. The sage is doing well out in the garden!
Decide on seating, and iron tablecloths and napkins. Ironing canNOT be left to the end! Doing so makes me feel utterly frantic.
I will have a kids’ table in the kitchen (cousins have more fun that way!) and I can fit the adults at my dining room table if I add a card table at one end. I got great wooden folding chairs some years ago at a yard sale — they come in so handy!
Gather up some decor. I do sort of wish American Thanksgiving were in October, like Canadian Thanksgiving. I have never quite managed to be ready in all the little extra touches for the big feast and Advent. Sigh. I think I will start dehydrating some orange slices. I got a big bag at Aldi the other day!Maybe this evening during the Notre Dame game, I can start addressing Christmas cards, alternating with knitting!
And I have to make a list of the lists I need to make!
These “background” preparations help me be peaceful as the intensity of kitchen work revs up. There are so many things that must be (or simply are) last minute. Let’s get a lot of it done now, even in little bits of time that come our way, if possible.
If not, then not! It means it didn’t really matter! Do your best, but — and — don’t stress!
When my children were little, I came to realize that it stresses me out to abandon the house to disorder on the grounds that I was creating a lot of disorder in the kitchen! (Of course, because creativity, including in preparing a big feast, has its corresponding disorder!)
That’s the main idea behind my prep guide. Young children tend to go around undoing whatever you have so carefully arranged, but at least the corners of your mind will be unburdened!
What I mean by that is this: the normal messiness of kids is so much easier to handle without stress if you know in your own mind that the remote corners of your home are basically clean.
A mess in the middle of the room is not a big deal. The usual blocks, books, trains, coloring pages, important projects using twigs and pinecones, special castles and racetracks, and so on added to stray dirty socks and dust bunnies under the beds, bedding that needs to be washed, fingerprints on the door jambs, random debris piled up on dressers and hallway tables… that’s what make me feel like I’m gasping for air.
Putting in a bit of effort now yields a more patient attitude later in the week about normal life. Listen, even if you pop what doesn’t belong into a laundry basket or two and stick those baskets somewhere out of the way, you’ll feel better walking around seeing dusted surfaces.
At least, I feel calmer when I hear the legos being poured out of their giant bin, knowing my laundry is caught up! It’s a state of mind! Otherwise, I really don’t think guests even notice. Isn’t that a funny thing?
Oh my goodness, speaking of being peaceful, last week in the middle of supper prep, when Deirdre was here with all her six hungry kids, suddenly my stove stopped working! I had to finish the soup in the instant pot!
What the heck? My new stove!
We pulled it out a bit to check the gas valve and see what we could see about why the burners were not lighting.
Stove pulled out, mess all over, manuals on the island (why does my fridge have like 7 manuals), panic in my heart!
After much internet searching and scrutiny of the owner’s manual, late in the evening (after choir practice), Phil said, “maybe… we ran out of propane?”
What??
“You’ll have plenty” they said. “No one uses that tank in a year” they assured me.
Well, I did! Eleven months, actually…
God is good, because, people, can you imagine that happening one week later i.e. the night before Thanksgiving??
I can’t even. I am very grateful to the angels for running me out of gas this week.
Advent is indeed coming. Maybe assign one small part of your mind to be in charge of making sure you have candles (even nice plain candles if you can’t find purple and pink — you can tie ribbons on them if you need to) and are getting everyone mentally prepared for the coming time of preparation and penance right after Thanksgiving.
It’s perfect to start out slowly. Not every single thing you want to do during Advent has to be ready a week from tomorrow!
In fact, the slowness of your preparation, the gradual turning from darkness to the splendor of Christmas, follows the Holy Family on their journey to Bethlehem, just as it follows the journey of the people of God from darkness to light.
Advent is given to and for busy mothers!
bits & pieces
I only really have one link for you — please, I beg you, read it and pass it along to everyone, including all the men!
Mom: The missing ingredient in the MAHA movement – Suzanne Venker
From the archives:I made my IG Thanksgiving “live prep” into a highlight!The best way to make sweet potatoes! For Thanksgiving, I peel them and place them attractively in a serving dish to be reheated on the day. You will need no extra sugar of any kind with this method!
On the chat last week at The School for Housewives, some lovely ladies were wondering if it’s okay that their children play together without her — is this good for their development that mom is not interacting with them, “not investing in them enough” were her words.
Oh my, yes! This is the goal, actually. Mother has her activities and interests, children have theirs. During rest times, of course, they sit down cosily to read a book together, and there are many times in the day that little conversations happen and so on. But getting your kids to play — and run off to explore and adventure — together without you is actually the dream!
By the way, you do not have to subscribe to read that Substack. You do to comment on some posts and to start threads on the chat. But the content is free!
These holidays are your extra busy days. Being free to have busy days is a precious way of life, one that doesn’t depend on riches but does depend on being willing sometimes to seem un-busy and un-scheduled and basically, almost hanging around doing nothing, or “just” chasing after kids. Don’t be fooled, though, into giving it up for something else.follow us everywhere!
Here is all the info:
Visit me at The School for Housewives and recommend it to your young friends!
My “random thoughts no pictures” blog, Happy Despite Them has moved over to Substack! — receive it by email if you like, or bookmark, so you don’t miss a thing! The old one is still up if you want to look at the comments on past posts. It will take me a while to get things organized, but you’ll be patient, I know!
There you will find the weekly podcast done by Phil and me, called On the Home Front. Do let us know what you think!
My book, The Summa Domestica: Order and Wonder in Family Life is available from Sophia Press! Also in paperback now! All the thoughts from this blog collected into three volumes, beautifully presented with illustrations from Deirdre, an index in each volume, and ribbons!
My podcast, The Home Truths Society, can be found on the Restoration of Christian Culture website (and you can find it where you listen to such things) — be sure to check out the other offerings there!
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