Planning Ahead

I know I'm a terrible housekeeper by some people's standards. But - my dishes are clean, our clothes are clean, there's no mold growing in the refrigerator, the kitchen doesn't smell, the bathtubs and toilets are clean, and there's no dog hair in the food I serve, what more do you want on a daily basis?

However, next Thursday is Thanksgiving and that means a houseful of company. All family, but still, I want the house to look niceer than it usually does. And since my back is feeling better, naturally I have to start cleaning up the clutter and doing extra loads in the dishwasher to get all the serving pieces clean so I don't have the disaster I had last year.

Last year I started cleaning on Tuesday, stayed up all night Wednesday night and was exhausted by Thursday morning and still had to cook! Not my best holiday. So this year I'm starting early. My kitchen cabinet doors already sparkle as does the vent-a-hood. The silver, champagne flutes and wine glasses will all be nice and shiny by tomorrow and back in their storage places by tomorrow, or Friday at the latest. The kitchen floor will be clened on Tuesday, and if it gets dirty after that, well, that's too bad, I WILL NOT STRESS!
And I've parceled out more of the cooking, too. I'm blessed with a family of great cooks, men and women, so I have decided to take advantage of them. I mean, they offered, and I accepted their kind offers! My Bro makes a MEAN turkey and his sweet wife bakes garlic cheese biscuits as good as anything Red Lobster ever set before you!
My Mother is making up a huge pot of Pinto beans. My Angel Baby Girl loves smashed potatoes, and she mashes them by hand. I gave my XY offspring a dish last Christmas that had the recipe for Green Bean casserole printed on it, so that's his assignment.
Me? Well, I'm gonna make some deviled eggs to snack on while we get ready to eat, and a tray of black and green olives {I just hope the ABG doesn't put the black ones on her fingers like she did when she was 2 and wave at everybody} and cheeses and crackers; and get a small ham from Rudy's, and make some yeast rolls from the freezer case, for 12 people I guess 4 dozen ought to be enough.
Oh, what am I actually going to MAKE? Well why didn't you ask that! Dressing, of course; giblet gravy; Candied Sweet Potatoes; Sweet Potatoes w/Orange juice and jalapeno glaze {don't go yuck, it's very good!}; maybe a corn pudding; and some corn bread to go w/ Mother's beans; pie crust from scratch for 2 pumpkin pies, 2 pecan pies, and then a new oreo pie, but I'm gonnna cheat with a store bought crust for that one.
We'll have tea, of course, and every Coke product.
Between dinner and pie, though, we have a tradition at my table that I started when my kids were little. I fill the glasses with Champagne for the drinkers, Sparkling Cider for the non-Drinkers and I start off and we go around the table and share what we are thankful for this year. Sometime it's funny, sometimes it's serious, sometimes it's touching, sometimes there's a smarta$$ at the table, heck in my fam there's usually a samarta$$ at the table. I started it as a way to set an example for my children, to teach them about being thankful in a concrete way, and it worked.
Last year my cousin, Gracie, was with us. She was a joy to have at the table. When my granddaughters showed up late in the day, she taught the younger one how to feed the dogs yeast rolls off her bottom lip! When my SNSS found out, he was horrified. I just shrugged, hey it wasn't me. Gracie did it. No accounting for what those crazy teenagers will do! They must have used up 1/2 dozen rolls feeding them to the dogsone bite at a time. Oh Well, it was the batch that got burned on the bottom anyway.

Well, I gotta get back to cleaning now.