Home for the holiday

I've been desperately awaiting Thanksgiving break for a while now. I was feeling burnt out from endless piles of homework and general school busyness, and counted down the days until I was done with class on Tuesday. Then I remembered how much of a pain travelling is. Not only did I have a giant bag of laundry and school books to pack, but I also needed to plan my meals for the next 5 days, including the Thanksgiving holiday. My mom was more than helpful; we talked many times planning in advance, and she obtained as much food as she could for me down here, including my 14 lb Thanksgiving turkey. I'm very thankful for her help....but packing my car was still a total pain. My thoughtful boyfriend brought me a huge cooler and filled it with ice, which was perfect for my frozen foods like corn, blueberries, and meat, as well as my food from the fridge like milk, butter, buttermilk, and veggies. What I hadn't considered was how heavy this would all be - it's a good thing I go to body sculpt classes! (just kidding). It was really difficult to maneuver though. And then I had a laundry basket of goards, pumpkins, potatoes, beets, onions, honey, tea, and other foods that don't need to stay cold. Finally, I have about 1.5 gallons of hard cider that will be essential for proper holiday festivities. Once I'd gathered and packed all of these foods, I was feeling ready for the holiday, and more than ready to drive to Pittsburgh.

I love cooking at home. Having a dishwasher is a definite perk, and there's more space to work with in my home kitchen than there is in my kitchen on Prospect St. Everything was going great until tonight. I came home from Kali's house to discover our oven wasn't working (the day before Thanksgiving!). The stove top is working fine, but the oven won't turn on - no gas is coming out, so we can't light the pilot manually. I took my dinner over to Nick's to bake, but I'm still worried about tomorrow. A technician is coming early tomorrow morning (he is most definitely a saint) and I'm really hopeful he can fix it. I was planning on making my pumpkin pie and mashed potatoes tonight, but the oven really thwarted my plans. I'm running a 5-mile Turkey Trot tomorrow morning in Pittsburgh, so I won't be home to cook until 11 at the earliest, and keeping up with Thanksgiving traditions, I plan on spending time at Nick's and Kali's for the holiday. Between all of these activities I need to find time to roast my turkey, prepare mashed potatoes and corn, bake my pumpkin pie, and experiment with gravy. Tomorrow will be a busy, hectic, but hopefully fun and memorable day.