Thanksgiving Leftovers

I happen to think that food tastes better when it is on someone else's plate. I should clarify, just so new friends never want to eat with me: I happen to think that food tastes better when it is on a family member's plate--like my mom's, my husband's, and now, my daughter's.

Similar to what I've learned about food in general over the years (by my own account and many others'): it just tastes better when someone else cooks it.

My pick-from-other-plates tendency annoys every one whose plate I pick. They call it rude, I call it grazing. And interested! I am interested in what they're eating! Isn't that thoughtful?

To be completely honest, most of the time I don't even realize I'm doing it. (Does that make it eat-walking? A term I prefer to "mindless eating".)

So you have to imagine my (delight?) yesterday at Thanksgiving dinner, which included my husband, my daughter, and me feasting on turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, and asparagus. After just a few bites of turkey, a fistful of stuffing, and sweet potatoes that I swear were coming out of her ears, my daughter proclaimed, as she does, "All done."

I wiped her face, cleaned her hands, and helped her out of her chair. I didn't return to mine but instead cleaned up some dishes and began to put some extras away. I heard my husband laugh and when I looked to see at what, Ava had climbed up in my chair, pointed at my plate and said, "Mommy's" and proceeded to eat the rest of the turkey off of my plate.

Apparently, she thinks food tastes better when it is on someone else's plate too (though I'll make sure that the clarification I apply to myself applies to her as well).

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I was very thankful for my mom and my mom-in-law who provided in-a-pinch cooking advice "from a distance" on Thanksgiving Day--especially as they were preparing their own scrumptious meals.

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Finally, I'd love to know what oven Barefoot Contessa uses to cook her turkey in. She reports her stuffed 12 pound turkey to take about 2.5 hours. Fortunately, it was just the three of us for dinner because my stuffed 11 pound turkey took four (though I planned on 2.5!)

Splurge-ilicious:

On a day when the "traffic and weather on the 5's" report in the Baltimore-Washington area has nothing to do with the highways and everything to do with the parking lots, I'm going to reduce my splurge of the day to one word: LEFTOVERS