The Official Start of the Holidays!

Yay!!! An excuse to temporarily halt our one month trial of the 'eat clean' diet. Dave and I have been trying our best to try out a new lifestyle where you make an effort to cut sugar out of your diet and try to stick to six small meals a day. It involves a lot of cooking, since the philosophy of the diet is to buy unprocessed foods so you have more control over what you're eating. So far, our biggest complaint is we have a hard time eating all the food(!), and yes, we're losing weight. We'll see how it continues to goes, but on Thanksgiving we felt we could be officially excused from eating 'clean.'
We went up to Dave's parent's house in Maryland, and had a wonderful time! Check out the beautiful table setting they had. Dave's Dad retired from the Army on Tuesday (BIG congrats), and a lot of the family that came for the ceremony stuck around for Thanksgiving. It wasn't quite the mad house that my first Thanksgiving with Dave's family was (50+ people), but there was lots of company.To my mother's horror (her arteries object), and my utter delight (I'm sure my arteries object too), Dave's family fries their turkey after injecting it with Cajun seasoning. This year I was able to capture the process.
I am always amazed at how quickly the Turkey cooks. It only takes a little over one hour. I love the way it tastes...it's very moist, and of course the seasoning is lots of fun. No pyrotechnics occured, and as always a fire extinguisher was on hand in case of a mishap.Jennifer also make a Turkey (yup, there were that many people) in the more traditional roasted method. I sampled both, and they were excellent! Dave had the honor of cutting up the Turkeys...he seemed to enjoy this a bit much. Don't you think he has a bit of a scary gleam in his eye? Hmm...So here was part of the feast (awaiting one more Turkey platter). We served buffet style in the kitchen after realizing there was no way we could pass around all the food.
Here is my annual pie contribution. Two apple, two pumpkin, one cherry, and one chocolate cream. They really didn't take that long, although I suppose after the one year where I made fifteen pies it's all relative.Being back in the US has made me crave doing things that are very American. I missed Black Friday last year (though I did have fun on the internet), but for some insane reason I felt compelled to participate in Black Friday this year. After combing over Thursday's adds, Best Buy's doorbusters caught my eye (who can argue with 18 month zero percent financing?). We didn't have an HDTV, and I've heard bad things about the converters. So...we hopped in line at about 10:30 pm on Thursday, armed with blankets, hats, gloves, and chairs. I still can't believe I talked Dave into this. He really is a good sport. We stayed out all night until the doors opened at 5 am. It was a really interesting experience. It was cold (Dave and I have both been very sick this entire week...so I suppose we're suffering the consequences of styaing out), but people in the line were very friendly, and the police showed up at about 3 am to keep the line in control. There was no rushing the doors when the store opened, though people definitely strode with purpose toward their selected loot. We walked out the proud owners of a 40 inch LCD TV and a Blu-Ray player. Total savings: over $400. Only in American can you feel like you've 'saved' money after making such large purchases. I don't think this is something I'll care to repeat (seriously...it was COLD), but I'm still thrilled I went out and experienced Black Friday, and I'm very proud of our purchases.