Happy Thanksgiving!

Wishing all of you a very Happy Thanksgiving from one of your American forum friends! What a great American tradition--one designed to remind us to count our blessings. And to eat until we pop.

I'm thankful for this forum where I can laugh, learn, and share. I'm grateful for our online community and especially those of you who I've gotten to know and (mostly ) love over the years. Have a blessed day.

 

You are right, Dave! How could I forget that it's "no pics, didn't happen". So here are a few from our Thanksgiving Day yesterday.

We started the day with a nice long walk with Ellie, the Boxer under blue skies and somewhat brisk (for Tucson) temperatures. Then it was out to the garage to prep the bikes for our annual Thanksgiving tradition (which we also do on Christmas and Easter). Mr. Sandi and I ride to either Waffle House or Denny's, have breakfast at the breakfast bar, leave our server a whopping tip, then continue on with a motorcycle ride for another hour or so. We've been doing this for probably close to ten years now. It all started when we had a conversation about all the folks who work on holidays, restaurant employees in particular. Both Mr. Sandi and I have been in that position in our earlier years so we really appreciate the folks who are there to wait tables and cook and wash dishes while we're off work and celebrating the holiday. And at some point or another each of us was the recipient of a tip so large that we still remember it quite vividly. So it's a bit of a way that we "pay it forward". Last year on Thanksgiving we went to Denny's but drove in Mr. Sandi's truck and ate our breakfast out in the parking lot on the tailgate of his truck--thanks to Covid.

This Thanksgiving it was Waffle House because Mr. Sandi was craving a waffle. There's a sweet older gentleman named Freddy who functions as a "greeter" there and he has the most earnest demeanor and takes his job very seriously. On Christmas day he wears a red and green Christmas-themed sport coat which is quite a sight. I didn't get a photo of Freddy this year as he was quite busy and he seemed a little less chipper than pre-Covid times.


Both Mr. Sandi and I got the breakfast special--two eggs over medium, bacon, hash browns, a pecan waffle, and coffee Yum. A little appetizer for the feast we had planned for later in the day.


After breakfast we rode over Gates Pass and through Saguaro National Park--West and Tucson Mountain Park. It's a favorite loop of our Sunday ride group and it was nice to have just the two of us riding this route today. Temperatures were still a bit brisk--for me anyway!


This year was a very quiet Thanksgiving celebration with just the three of us--Mr. Sandi (Steve), Ellie, the Boxer, and me. We were quite content to lay low this year and to count our blessings in our small little family.

Our meal was a very traditional one for an American Thanksgiving meal. We purchased some of the things we had for dinner and for the remainder, I prepared some and Steve prepared others. The two dishes that I've been bringing to the table for years are my mom's fresh cranberry relish and a sweet potato & carrot dish from The Silver Palate Cookbook. Mr. Sandi always like to make green bean casserole--recipe compliments of Campbell's Soup. For desert we had pumpkin pie with Cool Whip. Some of these things are total throwbacks to our childhoods in the Midwest.




There you go, @sprintdave! It did really happen.