Thanksgiving Highlights

I haven't been blogging very much lately... and it's not that I don't want to. I think about blogging a lot. I dream about it. Day dream that is. But these days I've really been running around like a chicken with my head cut off. Or my wings cut off. And maybe one of my feet cut off too.

Well tonight I'm finally forced to sit down and do something fun-productive because Joe has the car and I'm stuck without any way to get back to work and do A) interviews for a holiday pops story B) write said story C) write tour of homes story D) fix my new column "Girl Eats World" about the cushaw squash E)Gather information for a new photo feature I'm starting Thursday F)edit and layout the wedding announcements G) Call people to set up interviews for the Madrigal Feaste story. There's probably an H) sitting somewhere on my desk, but for now that's all I can remember.

I really don't like December, and it's not even December yet.

OK enough whining. Let's look at some wonderful Thanksgiving highlights:
These are the cushaw squash pancakes I made the night before we left for Cleveland. We ate them in the car on the way there.

Joe and I got to see many of his relatives on our trip and enjoyed many, many home cooked meals. This is a small selection of the desserts we had to gorge on Thanksgiving Day. The cookie is a soft Italian Biscotti... They were lightly iced and had orange zest in the dough. Made by another Italian in Grandma Giammo's apartment building. Must get that recipe! Joe devoured half the tin for first breakfast on Black Friday. Behind the biscotti is tofu pumpkin pie... my mom's recipe made by Joe's mom, just for me (and Jack, who is also lactose intolerant.)
And here's an adorable chickadee, looking more colorful than I remembered them, at the Cleveland Metroparks Rocky River nature center-- a place I could probably spend hours sitting in the bent-branch rockers, ogling critters until the sun goes down. Some genius placed several feeders just outside a wall of reflective glass windows. I think it's one of my favorite spots on earth. The day after TG, the Parrino clan braved the cold to take a very short walk in the snow crusted woods and to sit in those rockers. We saw chickadees, nuthatches, tufted titmice, red bellied woodpeckers, hairy woodpeckers and downy woodpeckers, mourning doves, junckos and the pudgiest squirrel I've every seen. He didn't bound, he waddled.