Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life

On Friday before the Thanksgiving long weekend I asked a visiting scientist whether he was going to any special Canadian Thanksgiving meals. When he said no, I spontaneously invited his family (of three) to a meal at our house. Then later on that same day, while at a wild BYOB bowling party (yes, they exist in small towns with lax liquor laws), I discovered too many friends in the same predicament. So I started inviting people over to eat a Thanksgiving lunch at our house.

This is how I came to cook a Thanksgiving meal for twelve using one wood stove, one convention oven, one small hotplate and a slow cooker.

Two very late evenings later (2 AM bedtimes), the table was replete with local goods: four small chickens, gravy, two heaving piles of seasoned roasted potatoes, similarly high piles of fried green beans with cashews, maple-glazed carrots, stuffing, our own cranberry sauce, squash, turnip, pickles, kale chips, fresh tomatoes and cucumbers, apple crisp, berry crisp, and apple cider to drink. Our guests had brought some bread and cabbage dishes, as well as one Tiramisu dessert.

Compulsive Natalie ™ was terrified we wouldn't have enough food. She was being crazy.

It was unseasonably warm this weekend, so we toured the scene of pastoral bliss (as one guest put it), and ate our dessert in the grass while drinking tea from our own mint plants. As a byproduct of compulsiveness, house projects that had gone unfinished for the last few months were frantically completed before our guests' arrival. It was a very lovely weekend, and I'm looking forward to going home to a clean house & a refrigerator full of left-overs.