What I wore to get indigestion

The Beauty Boomer arranged these flowers with her own white hands.

Did everyone have a lovely Thanksgiving? I hope so.

We weren't hosting a Thanksgiving dinner, yet much cooking occurred. We were doing a potluck with friends, and because no one was coming here, we used the energy we would have spent cleaning up and spent it in the kitchen.

Mr. Buxom baked four pies. Pecan, chocolate cream, apple, and sweet potato. They were all successful. If you check your copy of The Alice's Restaurant Cookbook, you will discover that "sweet potato pie leaves pumpkin pie sitting in the road." This is God's truth, people.

What do you mean, you don't have a copy of The Alice's Restaurant Cookbook? For shame.
Listen, those hippies understood food. They did better by us today than James and Martha Pearl Villas did with My Mother's Southern Kitchen and My Mother's Southern Entertaining.

Today I baked Martha's gingerbread men (except I used a turkey-shaped cookie cutter because it's Thanksgiving.) These were not successful. In fact, they were by far the worst cookies I've ever made. They were agreeably spicy, but not sweet enough to actually qualify as a dessert. Also, they were rock hard. It's my belief that Martha Pearl was overly concerned with gingerbread's use as gingerbread house building material. At any rate, her recipe produced gingerbread that was more drywall than dessert.

After the gingerbread debacle, I baked some butterscotch brownies. And pocketbook rolls. And wild rice salad. And my amazing fattening salad. And Martha Pearl Villas's Party Potatoes, which were extremely tasty.

Then we went to my friend Jeanne's house. She had also prepared vast quantities of food.

We all returned chez Buxom for the pie. And caffeinated beverages and/or alcohol. I had some Grand Marnier. By that point, I fully appreciated Grand Marnier's versatility. It's a drink, but it's also a dessert. And you don't need to cram much of it into an already-protesting belly--a jigger or two is plenty. I like that. It's efficient.

But you want to know what I wore. I repeated an outfit I wore to a luncheon earlier this month. I wore my brown Worth dress with the laser cut back, the Tsubo color blocked heels, and to throw all of you a curve ball, a different necklace. I wore one of those super long Chanel necklaces that you can double or even triple up. This one has pearls, black beads, and double C's.

It was an early birthday present from me to myself. And I'm so grateful to myself, because I love it.

And to cook and serve pie? My Official Preppy Apron.

Before Truth, The Right Fork. Our motto.

And hey--look what else came out of the cupboard.

Semper Preparatus

I know I've ranted recently about wearing pantyhose and how we should all stop judging. But at the end of the day, boy, was I glad to get out of my control tops. I had been asking a lot out of the Spandex.

Here's hoping you ate well and looked splendid!

Butter Thanksgiving report

It all went very well, except for the part where I wanted to put my husband and sisters-in-law through a paddle-wheel for being so NOISY and generally CHATTY and BUBBLY when I was TRYING to make GRAVY in a BRAND-NEW roasting pan that has a NON-STICK LINING and therefore requires SPECIAL IMPLEMENTS that I couldn't FIND.

(I'd like to pause here for a minute and for a moment of thankfulness. Thank you, dooce, for inventing "dooce caps," which allow us to say very straightforward things EXTREMELY EMPHATICALLY in a way which we hope is HUMOROUS.)

So anyway, here was the menu ... in all it's almost-completely-from-scratch glory:

Turkey, stuffing, gravy, cranberry sauce, and two sticks of butter
Mashed potatoes with butter and light cream, i.e., the real way, not that heretical way Joke keeps going on about
Green beans tossed in melted butter and freshly grated parmesan cheese
Pureed Sweet Potatoes with buttery Pecan Praline topping
Pumpkin Ravioli with Sage Butter
Wild Rice Salad with Pecans and no butter
The World's Most Fattening tossed salad with blue cheese, pine nuts, croutons, olive oil and mayonnaise but no butter

Pecan pie with pecans and brown sugar and guess what?
Chocolate chocolate chip Bundt cake
Whipped cream, which if we'd kept whipping, would have turned into butter
Cranberry-Oatmeal cookies and three sticks of butter right there

a whole box of those Mozart Kugeln
Coffee with cream, and not, you'll be amazed to hear, butter

I had one small plateful of food and a taste of the pie and cake. Then I sat around and felt stuffed and uncomfortable. For hours. WAS IT THE BUTTER?

I only feel better now that I've spent two hours on my feet doing dishes. This doesn't sound like a lot of fun, but I enjoyed it. I got to listen to my latest audiobook while I hand-washed and put away my grandmother's china, and I think the resulting standing forced the food away from my gall bladder, which judging from the amount of butter in tonight's dinner, must have been ready to explode. So I was actually glad to do it.

To the glow I always feel after I've achieved another new high point in housewifery, I can now add the realization that I haven't burped in HOURS.

We had fun. To the crowd of Buxoms there was added my son's cello teacher. My son's cello teacher is obviously quite capable of talking about classical music, and therefore kept my father-in-law out of trouble. Also we had my friend "Vodka," who has a daughter the same age as ours, and the two of them managed to kept my daughter out of trouble. She was excited and giggly, and she wanted to lip-synch to Madonna songs, but no tears were shed.

I thought we were going to have more people, so I rented a 72-inch round table and six gold ballroom chairs from one of those party rental places. We didn't end up using the table, but the pretty gold ballroom chairs rock. I didn't take pictures, because I was too busy looking for the PLASTIC whisk for the GRAVY so I wouldn't SCRATCH THE NEW PAN WITH MY DOOCE-CAPS but they looked amazingly festive. I think I might buy some. Maybe if I have lovely ballroom chairs, I'll cook dinner for people more often than Thanksgiving and Christmas.

I mean, I'm a good cook. Just ask the people who were sitting around tonight burping.

Oh, and my son's cello teacher wanted to play the piano and accompanied me while I sang a Faure song, so the evening had very Parisian-salon overtones.

In addition to the burping, I mean.

In conclusion, I have only this to say: BUTTER.

Thanksgiving count down

Here's what's done so far:

1. the pecan pie is baked and in the freezer
2. the 72 inch round table and 8 chairs are ordered from the party rental place
3. there's a raw turkey in the refrigerator, and a whole lot of raw fresh food all over the kitchen counters

Here's what I need to do next:

1. Everything.

Did I mention that my in-laws are coming tomorrow, and they're spending the night? Which means sheets and towels all around.

So tomorrow I'll start where I want to end--by setting the dining room table. Then I'll make the sweet potato/praline side dish. And the cranberry sauce. Then I'm baking pumpkin bread and chocolate Bundt cake and these cookies:

Cranberry-Oatmeal Cookies*

1 1/2 cups unsalted butter
1/3/4 cups light brown sugar, firmly packed
2 large eggs
1 1/2 T. honey
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 tsp. salt
2 cups unbleached flour
1 box (18 oz) old-fashioned rolled oats
12 oz. fresh cranberries, coarsely chopped
1/2 cup golden raisins
finely chopped zest of 1 orange
1 1/4 cups coarsely chopped walnuts (I might use pecans)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line baking sheets with parchment paper. Cream butter and sugar in a large bowl. Add eggs, honey, vanilla, and salt. Beat until smooth and creamy. Using a large wooden spoon or your hands, work in the flour and oats until well combined. Add the cranberries, raisins, orange zest, and walnuts. Mix until evenly incorporated. With your hands, form the dough on the baking sheets into patties 1/2 inch thick and 2/12 to 3 inches in diameter. Bake the cookies until lightly browned but still a little soft at the center, 15 or 20 minutes. Cool on wire racks. Makes about 25 cookies.

* From Sarah Leah Chase's Cold Weather Cooking