Thanksgiving 2011

Thanksgiving is a time to appreciate all that we have, which in practice means we gather to cook together, remember how much we enjoy and love each other, and then eat together (going around that cycle several times in the course of the afternoon and evening).  Amy, Sarah, Rebecca and I spent Thursday at Amy's parents' Thanksgiving and Friday at my brother Eric's Thanksgiving.  We may finish working off the calories by February, and I think the joy will last even longer.

The setting of the table evokes our longstanding family traditions.  At Eric's house (above), the fruit plate echoes the Hochheimer grandparent's in Norwalk, Connecticut (there always was a persimmon on the plate along with the figs, dates, grapes, pears, ...).  At Amy's parents, we debated whether the paper turkeys with our names written on them included any originals from Amy's and her sister's childhood.

Good food appeared, provenance of all sorts.  Where did these amazing olives come from?  Eric made the fiery garlic string beans for his celebration.

Benigno made the brussels sprouts at the top for the Eppler event -- he grilled them on the Weber grill outside.  Beni is also the recognized turkey-chef for the Eppler Thanksgiving, and cousin Daniel is always the turkey carver.

My brother David and I have carried on our mother's tradition of bringing sticky buns.  This year, someone asked, "How did sticky buns become part of the Hochheimer Thanksgiving meal?"  Aunt Ruth, Mom's sister, said that she had no early memory of sticky buns at Thanksgiving.  Since the recipe we use has always been the one from the Woodbine Cottage in Sunapee, New Hampshire, we worked out that Mom must have started bringing the sticky buns in the late 1960's or early 1970's, when we were going to the Woodbine quite often during the summer and consuming as many sticky buns as they would serve us.

 Thanksgiving isn't just people time; it's also puppy time (here cousin Ray with an Irish Setter named Lucy).

There was a Lucy at my brother's house as well -- below is one is one of my cousin Beth's pre-teen girls, who are both growing up so fast!

There is a long tradition in both households of bringing as many others as you can.  We played Password with Rebecca's boyfriend Philip and their friend Ben.

Benigno brought his lovely mother, who lives in Miami (and is my best dominos partner).  

 Sarah grabbed my camera to take pictures for awhile - here is my brother David

and she also took a picture of me!

The Eppler Thanksgiving group took the traditional pre-dessert walk to the Croton Reservoir dam

and both celebrations featured an inordinate number of creative and amazing desserts.

Some people set their year's goals around New Year celebrations.  But my big goal for the year is to master the art of the pie crust in time for Thanksgiving 2012!

The Halloween Storm of 2011

When we went to bed the night of October 29, power was already out.  We had been outside to see the snow coming down on the autumn leaves that still dangled from tree branches.

Some people we know only got power (and water and phone and internet) back last week, over ten days after the storm.  We were lucky; we only lost power and water for three days, and we still have an old fashioned land-line (rather than phone through the cable company) so my grandmother's black rotary-dial phone still worked.

The night of the storm, we slept in the living room downstairs, worried that the giant tulip poplar would fall in the night and crush our bedroom.  We heard lots of cracking and crashing through the night (at one point we woke and I said to Amy, "Well, the house didn't shake so I guess that tree didn't hit us!").  When we woke in the morning, one day before Amy's Halloween birthday, the snow and devastation were unbelievable.

Our front yard was unrecognizable -- there were seven trees down, and you could barely see our house through the tangle.

Large trees were leaning on power lines everywhere.  We read that this was the most widespread power outage ever in Connecticut, and that there were even more trees down than we had seen two months earlier from Hurricane Irene (many trees resting on power lines and across roads).

One article in the Washington Post suggests that although global warming is increasing the amount of extreme weather we get, scientists don't yet know whether the freakish snowstorms of the past year are anything other than random aberrations. I must admit that while I enjoy the drama of the wild weather, the experience palls after a few days hauling water to flush the toilets.  But the interruption of modern conveniences and the downed trees littering our yard don't erase the beauty that we had for a few hours, the day before Halloween, when the sun came out and the too-early winter landscape shone radiant.