Yesterday our church canceled the morning service and instead hosted an evening Thanksgiving feast preceded by a pinata for the kids and a hymn sing for everyone.
When we tallied up the numbers a week ago, we figured about sixty people would attend–and so prepping food for seventy seemed reasonable. Considering our bumper potato crop, M and I offered to bring mashed potatoes to go along with the gravy, ham, turkey, sweet potatoes, green beans, rolls, cranberry salad, pies, and hot tea and coffee also on the menu.
Saturday we scrubbed three quarters of a bushel of potatoes (someone had told us that half a bushel would feed around forty people), and Sunday morning I crammed them into our four largest cooking pots for boiling, and then mixed them, peels and all, with what sounds to me like a piddling two pounds of butter, lots of salt, and a gallon and a half of milk. We smashed them into waiting crock pots in our new kitchen, with the overflow two-thirds filling the smaller of our biggest kettles keeping warm on our current kitchen stove.
The feast was a tremendous success, lavish, delicious and festive. M had spearheaded the decorations, and all was autumnal and warm; she also led the hymn sing most elegantly.
And she helped me cart home the one empty, the one nearly empty, and the two filled crock pots–and the still untouched big kettle.
Check out who is at the back of this beginning of the line–our western landowner neighbor and her husband:
