What a Difference a Year Makes?

On this Canadian Thanksgiving day, we once again gather to celebrate and of course give thanks. As always it’s a happy occasion with lots of conversation, laughter and delicious food. As a family, we are blessed.

We Won’t Back Down

One year ago, our Thanksgiving in the midst of Covid was an interesting ?? affair. Out of an abundance of caution, and because a vaccine was not yet available, we ate outside, sheltered from the pouring rain and huddled in the bone chilling cold. To put things in context, I refer you to our Thanksgiving post last year, titled “Thanksgiving in the Breezeway.” You have to read it to believe it.

If you are challenged for time, prefer to live in the present, or can’t be bothered to look up the post, what follows is a brief summary, for comparison purposes, of the many obstacles we encountered in staging our Thanksgiving in the Breezeway. Several times we thought about just cancelling but we were determined to be together and this was our only option, so we soldiered on. To do so we had to:

Set the table at the last minute because the wind kept blowing the table cloth and napkins off the table. In fact, we had to tie the table cloth down.
Secure a tarp at one end of the breezeway in an effort to keep the wind down. Even at that, it ended up flapping in the breeze.
Give up on our elaborate decorating plan for candles on the table. There was no point. The wind wouldn’t even let us light them!
Make do without an oven (again I refer you to last year’s post) so keeping the food warm, was virtually impossible, particularly since we chose an elaborate menu. We used two slow cookers, an Instapot, my warming oven, all 4 stove top burners and the barbecue. The kitchen was “ahumming”.

**We are all smiles, but note the winter jackets and propane heater 🙂**

Thanksgiving 2020 will live on in our family folklore for the foreseeable future. It was a unique experience at a unique point in time, hopefully never to be duplicated. I think you get the picture.

It Might As Well Rain Until September October 10th

So, is it any wonder then that we were all looking forward to a much warmer experience this year. The consensus among family members was “there’s nowhere to go but up.” Nothing could be worse than last year and besides, we were all double vaccinated. We would be eating inside and delighting in the cozy comfort of our warm house. In addition, we ordered a take out turkey dinner from a local restaurant so meal preparation would be limited to simply opening up containers and dishing out delicious food. Best of all, my oven was working!

Then the sky fell and our world was turned upside down. We realized we might not be as safe as we thought if we dined inside. Our three grandchildren under the age of 11 were attending school, and one daughter was teaching high school (a notorious viral and bacterial incubator.) They were thus very exposed to Covid and this was of major concern.

Texts went back and forth in the days prior to the big day. Discussion was endless especially when youngest daughter advised of the potential forecast. Not only was it going to be very cold, it was apparently going to rain all day. 🙁

Not to be deterred, we devised a brilliant plan. We would throw open our front entrance doors and place a table in the entrance hallway! Youngest daughter would eat at a separate table on the front porch and the rest of us would be inside. We would be close, but not too close. Just close enough to still enjoy each others company. (If nothing else, we are eternal optimists.)

Surprise!

As expected, the day dawned dark, gloomy and wet…..NOT! Nobody was more surprised than us (well, perhaps the weatherman, whose forecast was so incredibly off the mark) when we awoke to a dry and only partially cloudy early morning. Hmmmm, dare we hope for a miracle?

Apparently, yes, miracles do happen. By mid morning, the sky was blue, the sun was shining and all was well within our little world. Our house was buzzing with activity as we prepared for our Thanksgiving celebration. We had all hands on deck to put together the new propane heater purchased especially for today. And of course what would a family event be without some imaginative endeavours by our resident creativity director!

And finally, the main event! The table was set, and the outdoor space for youngest daughter awaited her arrival. Not to mention that Biscuit had arrived and was a welcome guest of honor.

So we threw the doors open and we were ready for business. Although we still needed the propane heater to keep us cozy, the atmosphere was joyful! We were together, covid free and awaiting a delicious non home cooked meal.

As always, The Sisterhood did a post event analysis. The best part? Not only was the sun shining, but there was no pressure to toil over a hot stove and worry about timing the meal so that it would be ready all at the same time. The hardest part was opening up the individually boxed portions, putting them into serving dishes and reheating. The worst part? The fact that the salad was loaded with onions (we have a life long, committed”onion hater” in our family.) At this point, however, nothing could dampen our enthusiasm. We unanimously agreed that the meal was delicious and worth every penny.It doesn’t get any better than this and as we now know, miracles really do happen.