I am thankful for alcohol.

Thanksgiving is not my favorite holiday. Food is a tricky issue for me, and sitting down to a table at which mass consumption is expected is a little irritating. But this year, it was pretty great. It was just my parents and me, which brought down the stress factor significantly. I have like five people in my entire extended family, so it's never been a big event, but this was really mellow. My day pretty much went like this: wake up, work out, ready Sunday New York Times (that's forethought!), do four loads of laundry, wash cars with dad, make stuffing, drink wine, eat! Awesome.

I love to cook this one recipe for stuffing I found online a few years ago. It doesn't have much fat, so my crazy stomach can tolerate it well. It's pretty simple, but it involves some chopping and mincing, so I get to practice. And my dad likes to help, so we have a little time to ... not talk together. He's not a big chatter.

The dinner was ham, stuffing, sauteed mushrooms and cranberry ice. The ice was my grandma's recipe, and involves a couple of hours of boiling cranberries, blending, adding stuff, blending more ... you get the idea. My mom and dad make a project out of that, and she's been trying for a while to make some that lives up to grandma's. Poor thing. But this year, it came out pretty well. It's like a sorbet, I guess, but not as sweet. And the wine, of course. This year, it was Trader Joe's Charles Shaw Valdiguie Nouveau. No idea. But I'm thinking it's like beaujolais nouveau. It was decent, and did the trick. I enjoyed dinner and was pretty bubbly. We lingered for like an hour and a half, talking about random stuff. At one point, I asked my mom if she'd ever had duck, and we ended up talking about parties my parents' friends used to throw, and how they at one time owned a share in a vineyard in Lodi. They sold it, and now have a car. That's something to be thankful for.