Every Day Is Thanksgiving

The thought struck me today when someone asked me about our Thanksgiving plans that a typical dinner at the Team Sabo House o' Grubbin' is almost like a run of the mill Turkey Day spread for a lot of folks. When you're feeding 14 people on a daily basis, you tend to go through the food. To wit, yesterday morning I brought home two loaves of bread. By this afternoon, there was nary a crumb to be seen of them. A gallon of milk opened this morning is an empty container in the recycling bin. There's a reason I'm on a first-name basis with people at the grocery store. The little boys are on sandwich kicks. For example, Ezra will say he's hungry. Ask him what he'd like to eat and he puts it this way: "Peanut butter and jelly with the crust off and the sandwich cutted up like this and on a plate." (Picture Ezra making a motion where he holds one hand flat and makes a cutting, or `cutted' motion with the other hand.)

Eli eats peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (crunchy peanut butter, with the crust off and on a plate) like they are candy. Abram is now able to make most of his own meals, which means he can be a terror in the kitchen pantry. The guy is built like a fencepost but you'd never know it judging from the time he spends in the kitchen throwing down various combinations of sandwiches, crackers, quesadillas and the like. Olivia is now able to reach things on the lower shelves of the pantry. I learned the hard way not to stick the raisins on the lower shelf ... she got into those and the diaper changing prompting accelerated rapidly. Raisins in her system is like rocket fuel in a race car. The girl has a metabolism a lot of big people would kill for, let's just put it that way.

Julie and Claire went shopping yesterday to get stuff for our Thanksgiving meal. Man, they brought home some food. Everything from bacon to yams to Jell-o to stuffing mix and even oysters. She spent something like $100. It's a special day, I guess, but is it hard not to feel guilty about that knowing how many people are going hungry in this country and around the world? I'm sure we'll get days worth of eating out of all that food ... at least I really, really hope so. Julie and the girls are going to start cooking and baking tomorrow for the big foodfest. You know how many people we're having over for the big event? The Thanksgivingpallooza at the House o' Sabo? Care to hazard a guess? Actually, we're not having anyone. It will be a nice intimate affair with just the 14 of us.