the pre-thanksgiving thanksgiving party

On Saturday, dev and Patrick hosted a wonderful pre-thanksgiving thanksgiving dinner! It was so much fun and the food was delicious! But, I am getting ahead of myself. After our weekly sat morn run, devon and I along with my new running friend, jenna, went to Einstein bagels where of course I asked for pumpkin bagels. The lady said they didn’t have any…arghh! But then! Low and behold she checks in back and says there are a bunch that are just now coming out of the oven. Whoo hoo! So I got my very hot and fresh pumpkin bagel to eat then and one more to take home. So that guy in the other bagel store must have been lying or not knowing what he was talking about when he said that pumpkin bagel season was over….

Anyways… I get home from running and start to make holly’s nana’s cranberry ice recipe. I had wanted to do it on fri night and even went to the store to get everything I needed for that and a few other things too. So I get home and I all ready to start my foray in to being a ‘chef’ when I realize that I forgot to buy sugar. Friends, there are literally 3 components to this recipe: water, sugar, and cranberries. Since it was already around 9, I decided I was way too tired to track down some sugar and so I figured I’d just do it once I got back home in the morning. My attempt was pathetic. I have pictures to prove it. Basically I wanted to show devon that I had really tried to make it and I hadn’t just flaked out. I did bring crackers and baked brie cheese (which was yummy, but didn’t get baked long enough… oh well). Ok, so how do I screw up a 3 ingredient recipe?? No idea. But I blame holly. Her directions were a little confusing, but I tried my best! Ok, probably only confusing to me since I never read recipes. Ever. I think maybe the sugar and water didn’t form the ‘syrup’ holly said it should form. I put exactly the right amount of water and sugar in the pot and boiled it for 5 mins, but it looked like it wasn’t very syrupy. And then I was supposed to beat it once it set, but it never set so I couldn’t beat it. Anyways… this is why I stick to box mixes. I can do those.

So, it’s time to head over to dev’s house and I pick up alice and then I swing by and pick up lara who was at mannish’s house. Lara was in town for a conference and it was really fun to see her! We got to dev’s (late of course) and we were the last to arrive. Oops, oh well. The amount of food was amazing though! Pumpkin pretzels which sugar, squash dip, baked brie, raspberries, wine, champagne, and I can’t even remember what else, but that was just for starters! For the dinner: lara, me, alice, nicole and her boy carlin, Elaine and her boy, adam, amy, dev, Patrick, Christine, and nikolai. I think that’s everyone! So I was munching on everything in sight and kept seeing adam’s ring which looked suspiciously like a culver ring… I’m trying to stare and see if it is without being completely obvious and weird, but I can’t and eventually he mentions he’s from northern Indiana and me being drunk blurts out “is that a culver ring?!?!”. And it turns out it was. He had graduated in 90 though so he knew a few of the younger brothers and sisters of people in his class that were in my class. So it was fun to meet another culver grad.

Eventually we all sat down to dinner, there wasn’t enough room at the big table for everyone so me, alice, and lara were relegated to the little kids’ table aka the coffee table. We had all kinds of goodies! Turkey, cranberries (I think those were there in anticipation of my cooking being a failure), stuffing, green bean casserole thingy, mashed potatoes, and I’m sure I’m forgetting some other stuff. It was all so yummy! The wine was flowing… I’m now a cheap drunk… and I was rather drunk by this point. We then brought out the pumpkin pie and some cheesecake and I went to town on my piece of pumpkin pie. After some more drinking and hanging out, I was getting extremely tired and needed to put myself to bed. Thankfully alice was sober and she drove us home. It was such a fun party! Bravo to devon and Patrick and thank you again for hosting all of us!!!
pictures to come!