Pbenjay's Blog

English: A slice of homemade Thanksgiving pumpkin pie served on a glass plate (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Tuesday is shopping day for me.  I’m off to Delicious Orchards to buy a Turkey Breast, a pumpkin pie and some apple cider – AND anything else that jumps off the shelf into my basket.  I know I will get sucked into buying some of the produce and ingredients there WHEN I know I will be paying more there than at Wegman’s but I can already feel the deep-bone tiredness that comes from store hopping and grocery shopping.  

Each year I tell myself not to overdo it and that it isn’t necessary to make every dish from scratch.  Intellectually that works right up until shopping day.  For the past several nights I have been cruising around the  Martha Stewart, Real Simple and Cooking with Nonna web sites and for every dish I eliminate, I add yet another.  I really love to make special dishes and prepare meals like Thanksgiving.  It’s not like I am creating dishes necessarily of my own, since if you read this blog, you know I pick out recipes that I think will be delicious.  Over the years I have compiled a large Thanksgiving recipes folder.  It’s filled with several different root vegetable soups, lots and lots of side dishes, salads, a good number of stuffing recipes and of course a bunch of ways to prep and season the turkey.  I even have pie recipes in there but I have to admit once I discovered Delicious Orchards, I haven’t made a Thanksgiving or Christmas pie.  However, lest you get completely disillusioned, let me state that I do make desserts, such as a cranberry trifle, a pumpkin cheesecake (to die for) and this year I making a chocolate ricotta mousse.

My grocery list is now a page and half and I have one day to do it all plus a few everyday errands;  You know the dry cleaner, Staples and the liquor store.  I can’t imagine cooking tomorrow night or Wednesday night, sounds like take-out Chinese!  

We’ve invited 4 guests so it will be six of us which is 3 more than originally planned.  So all of my OCD planning, recipe-reading, list making of what needed to be purchased for each recipe HAD to be revised so each dish will feed that many.  

Now if I can only find those plates!! I can’t believe I’m in this predicament, me who has no less than 4 sets of dishes in my New York apartment  cannot find the china plates for the cottage. This sounds weird I know, but here’s the deal;  The cottage has a 1950’s kitchen theme and motif so all of dinnerware and service pieces of Melmac or Bootonware or one of the other plastic dish wares of that era.  I have turquoise plates, pink plates, bowls in both colors, green service pieces, Jadite mugs, all of my glasses are from the 50’s – I just love it! I even have vintage cookware;  who remembers CLUB pots and pans?  Mine are turquoise.  However, as much as I love my dishes, I would like to serve Thanksgiving dinner on china plates and somewhere I believe there’s a set of Martha Stewart plates.  But where?  This is a teeny tiny cottage and  I know they are not in here, maybe the garage….