To get you excited for the mashed potato recipe tomorrow….ok actually just because it’s hilarious and I adore Martha Stewart and her serene awkwardness….here is Snoop Dogg’s visit to Martha in which he educated her about speaking and his posse (starts around the 45sec mark), while Martha taught him to peel potatoes and exposed a lewd liquor bottle. Thanks to Kim for sending it to me!

It’s been so busy here with the launch of this site that I’ve hardly even thought about Thanksgiving – the biggest national dinner party day of the year! My day of worship at the table of the dinner party gods! An entire government-approved holiday just to have a dinner party! Inexcusable, really.

But this year is a little different, which is why I haven’t been thinking much about my Thanksgiving menu or decor.  My grandpa is fairly ill with cancer and, since he’s the best grandpa a girl ever had, I’m going out to Denver to visit with him over the holiday.  A bunch of other family members are coming too, so we’ll do something Thanksgiving-related, but we aren’t sure yet how up to eating or anything celebratory Gramps will be. My idea is to do a “Thanksgiving Leftovers” Thanksgiving: skip the big dinner itself and go straight to the turkey/mashed potato/cranberry sauce/gravy/stuffing sandwiches!  Come on, you have to admit that’s everyone’s favorite part anyway. We can all sit around and eat whatever we want, and I think Gramps will be more comfortable eating casually than at a big formal dinner.

Since we’re all getting in late Wednesday night and there won’t be much time for cooking, we’ll probably just pickup ready-made fixings at Whole Foods and jazz them up a little. Tomorrow I will post a fantastic mashed potato dish that I will make if I have time on Thursday morning. This year, though, it’s not about the food at all. It’s about just being there together; which, after all, is the real aim of Thanksgiving.

I promise lots of decor and menu ideas next year.

All right, I have a confession to make. After writing my lovely Atlanta menu and being so excited to shop in the big store and cook in the big kitchen – and I really was! – I didn’t do any of it. We were so kept so busy running around from barn to horse to party all weekend that not only did I not have time to cook, but the only meals we ate at home were store-bought sandwiches. Epic fail, as far as cooking goes. Oh well, it was a great weekend and the menu is still just as yummy. I’ll make it soon enough.

Epic success, though, as far as riding horses goes.  I (sort of) jumped for the first time!  It was hardly a flying leap, but Hamish and I trotted up to a jump about a foot high and he sort of casually bounded over, and – this is the most exciting part – I stayed on and didn’t even teeter off balance at all! Yeah that’s right. So we did it about five more times. Next stop: Olympics.