November 21 - Italian Tapas

Since I love to cook and I really love Thanksgiving, if I were in the US today I would have been prepping (chopping celery, onions, and stale bread, making pie, tweaking the menu and making any last minute grocery store purchases) and listening to Christmas music.  It was funny to go to the grocery store today - the day before Thanksgiving - and only see the regular shoppers picking up normal things.  No hoards of last minute shoppers with loaded baskets of cream of mushroom soup and brown sugar and an extra pound of butter just in case and.....  It is easier this way, but truth be told, I miss it.

Later we talked to the girls via computer - they are preparing for their Thanksgiving with Turkey and Tofurkey and big plans with friends.  I have great memories of own our graduate school Thanksgivings with classmates and lots of unfamiliar side dishes from our international friends - hopefully our girls will make their own great memories tomorrow.

Then, this evening we went to an Italian restaurant in town where we met a couple of German students from Albert's language class.  Although we tossed in a few Spanish words for good measure and they occasionally would use German to search for a word, the night was mostly spent in English.  We had a good time and really enjoyed the food.

We got home a little late, but I decided it wasn't too late to put together a Thanksgiving treat for my class.  I don't have pumpkin or corn syrup or buttermilk, but I do have cocoa and pecans and cranberries - so Laura's experiment with cranberry chocolate pecan pie bars version 1.0 it is!

Maybe tomorrow I will start the Christmas music.