My easy peasy turkey dinner

I was pretty impressed with this product. You cook from frozen and since it's on a rack in the pan, there are lots of drippings so next year I'll make real gravy and use water from the vegetables. 

This was packaged turkey gravy but I did put in the drippings as you can see. My grandmother Phoebe's gravy was alway excellent and I remember one day my mother asked her how she did it. She had cooked a roast of beef that day and showed my mother how she scraped the drippings and brownings off the dutch oven that she cooked the roast in. Carol does the same thing with her turkey pan. As she says, it's not smooth perfect looking gravy but it tastes great.

The four of us had lots of turkey on Christmas Day. Jim and I had leftovers Boxing Day for dinner and there was still this amount for lunch yesterday.

This will be a new Christmas tradition thanks to Emi (the grand-niece of John and Carol). She put a happy face on an orange so now all mine have happy faces as well. I can't help but smile when I pass them in the kitchen.

And another new Christmas tradition is thanks to a gift to Carol from her sister. Literary insults will be part of our Christmas crackers.

Betty's gift to me was a page of literary insults intended for my wall. It includes gems like Jane Austen's: "You  have delighted us long enough." 

Carol's friend, Linda, gave Emi a couple of really thoughtful gifts.

"My friend Linda took time to carefully explain her gifts to Emi. They included a little purse holding a tiny writing pad and envelopes so Emi could write notes to her parents. Emi  later quietly  confessed to Linda that she couldn't write yet, and asked if she would write "I love you daddy," in a note to her father. Much drawing was also included before the missive was sent. The little purse also contained "worry dolls," which Linda explained is a Mexican tradition in which children tell their worries to tiny figurines that they then put under their pillows. By the morning, the worries are gone, thanks to the dolls that lift them off the children's shoulders. It seems that Linda's thoughtful gifts were great hits."

Many years ago, Richard gave me a set of these "worry dolls". (They are somewhere in my various boxes of memorabilia). Well, worrying about our kids is what Moms do, right. I think this was around the time he was working in San Francisco and would decide to drive home on his own for a long week-end beginning just after a long week working. Obviously, I was worried sick even though he said he went to the side of the freeway and took naps when he was tired. He soon learned to not tell me he was doing this and phoned when he was safe and sound and waiting for the Victoria ferry.

I really enjoyed Carol's blog post about their Christmas Day celebration and just loved John's wonderful photos documenting it. Well, that's a perk of having a professional photographer in the family. Now, if I could just find a local professional to photograph all my wonderful sunsets.

Carol's Christmas blog post:
http://mountdunbar.blogspot.com/2019/12/johns-christmas-gift-to-all.html


And given this very dreary weather, we were really pleased to see that Richard and Grace found a perfect place for the little fireplace. Their tree looks super and it looks like a bottle of scotch or something Jim and I would enjoy beside it!