"Life is Short, You're Capable"

How was everyone's Thanksgiving? Mine was fine. I got a super late start on the pumpkin pies though. Even though it's always been my responsibility since I was 10 or so to make the pies, I don't know the recipe as well as one might assume I did. You know where I'm going with this, don't you?

I put the sugar in first, then the eggs, then the milk. But as I scanned down the recipe I realised my mistake. I'd used white sugar instead of brown sugar. Oops! I tried fishing out the white sugar with a spoon but it was dissolving too fast. Since it was so late, it wasn't like I could go back to the grocery store and buy more ingrediants. Maybe it was the fatigue setting in, but I decided the best solution to the problem was to add the proper amount of brown sugar. So instead of one and a cups of sugar, I had twice that. I crossed my fingers and hoped no one would notice. Why I thought I could pull this off, I have no clue. I once accidently used a half a tablespoon of cinnamon instead of one tablespoon, and my grandma noticed.

Thanksgiving dinner went well. No one really noticed the extra sugar in the pies, thankfully. We had all the usual foods, turkey, mashed potatoes, yams, stuffing, string beans, etc. My entire life, I have heard my grandmother say "This is the LAST year I'm making the cranberry salad!" Yet every year, there it is. I don't touch the stuff myself. Her cranberry salad never seems to hold the shape of the jello mold. Usually this isn't a big deal.

Unless, of course, my grandma's sister comes to dinner. Then all Hell breaks lose. My great-aunt swears it's the same recipe. Yet, by some miracle of physics, only my grandma's cranberry salad refuses to hold its shape. Somehow the structural integrity of the cranberry salad **inevitably** fails.

What all the fuss is about is beyond me. Bleh!! There should not be a dessert featuring cranberries. Ick!

Four years ago, I invited my then-boyfriend to our families Thanksgiving dinner. I had my doubts about the quality of this idea. Why the hell would I take such a finicky vegetarian to my family's dinner? He had everything that was meat free. On the way to his family's dinner in Placerville, he had the nerve to complain about my grandma's cooking. "Who puts olives in stuffing??" he bitched the whole way there. 'Excuse me?' I thought, 'You don't even know how to scramble eggs.' Hmf!! After one of the longest drives in my entire life-- he had a habit of whistling off key to whatever music was on-- we finally made it to his sister's house. They had kept some plates warm for us, which was sweet.

But imagine my horror when I took the tin foil off my plate. The dressing looked rather peculiar to me, but I was determined to be a better sport than he had been at my family's dinner. I took a bite, and to my horror, tasted cranberries! Eew!! I slowly worked at what suddenly became a Mt. Everest sized mound of stuffing-- chock full or cherries and cranberries.

The next day, on the way home I couldn't help myself. "Who the HELL puts cherries and cranberries in stuffing!?" I asked, voice full of disdain.

**Tragic Tuyen