Tag: thanksgiving

Thanks, Food, etc.

I started my first Thanksgiving as a citizen of the USA by reaching inside a turkey. Mercifully for all involved, the turkey wasn’t alive at the time.

I am thankful for many things. Food: I’ll eat a lot today. Family: it’s good to be with my family here, and I’ll call my family back in England. Opportunity to tell yet again the joke that Brits do celebrate Thanksgiving – on the 4th of July.

Back to food. One of the things I cook most often is pasta with what we call b-sauce. We call it that because it’s like bolognese sauce, but isn’t authentic. Today’s Guardian carries the reassuring news that “there is no definitive recipe for a bolognese meat sauce.” It provides several recipes, varying with respect to meat, vegetables, wine, whether there’s a dairy ingredient, etc.

My own recipe comprises, in order of appearance in the saucepan: onions, carrots, ground pork, mushrooms, tomatoes (crushed, canned), wine, salt, pepper, oregano. Talking of wine, I’m surprised that most of the recipes in the Guardian article call for white wine. I prefer to use red, have sometimes used white, but often have to resort to water.

All this reminds me of a recent (well, earlier this month) WordPress.com announcement: FoodPress. The site looks interesting, but could use a more prominent search box.

Wherever you are, I hope you also have much to be thankful for.

Social Media Thanks

Who or what are you thankful for in social media? asks Mashable Ben. I’m thankful for sharing, which is vital to social media in so many ways.

So much of the software is free/open source. So many of the web services are free as in freemium. So much of the content is shared via creative commons. So many people share their knowledge to help others via support forums and other channels.

Reasons to be Thankful

I’m thankful for my wife and kids. They just left to drive down to Philadelphia, to spend Thanksgiving with family there. I’m up here in Boston to finish packing our house. I miss them already.

I’m thankful for friends, such as those with whom I’ll be having Thanksgiving dinner. It was those same friends with whom Judy and I celebrated Christmas in 2002. We thought that our first child was five weeks away. But as we were turning in that Christmas night, Maddie decided that she couldn’t wait much longer to come out.

So Maddie will be six on the day after Christmas this year. Her brother, Max, is three. The four of us will be in a new house, in Silver Spring, Maryland, for this Christmas.

Before I get on with packing, I’ll call my parents. They live in England, where the day after Christmas is Boxing Day. And, of course, Thanksgiving comes on the fourth of July.

Thankful

As Thanksgiving weekend comes to a close, I have much to be thankful for. I think that the most thankful moment of the weekend came as I was drifting off into a nap yesterday afternoon. I am very thankful for my two kids, and that that moment I was particularly thankful that they were taking an afternoon nap at the same time, that I’d had some time to read a novel, and that I too was able to take a nap.

Now, of they stay asleep, I’ll be able to finish that novel (Farthing, by Jo Walton, highly recommended).