In Which We Cook All The Things

The kids had a half-day of school today, which I spent picking up a few Christmas presents so I'd have something to wrap and put under the tree on Friday, when we start setting up for the holiday.  Then I picked up Connor, dropped him off at the house to hang out with my mom, and went to the doctor's appointment I was supposed to go to on Monday.

After I had respite care for Connor, and while he hung out in the living room listening to Irish fiddle tunes, drawing on his iPad and charming the nurse, Eden and I spent pretty much the whole rest of the day either cooking or making crafts.  I showed Eden how to string cranberry garlands for the Christmas tree (yet more sneaky fine motor skills therapy) and she worked on that while I tipped the green beans and grated unripe papaya for the som tam.  We're having a nontraditional Thanksgiving dinner this year: som tam (green papaya salad), coconut sticky rice, cranberry-orange relish, a vegetable dish that our friend is bringing and a Japanese-style bourbon pumpkin cake, which is made with mascarpone cheese and a whole bunch of frothy egg whites.  So it's kind of a vegetarian Asian fusion Thanksgiving, which works for me.

My biggest problem today was not wanting to eat all of the food as it came out of the oven instead of waiting for tomorrow.  I'm very proud of the amount of restraint I showed-- particularly when it came to the pumpkin cake.  Of course, it helped that the cake had bubbled over and I was forced to cut off and eat all of the pieces where it had puffed up on our baking stone.

But they totally don't count because they weren't part of the main body of cake anymore, so I can still be all self-congratulatory about not stuffing the entire thing in my face the second it came out of the oven, and also I have the added advantage of knowing the cake turned out beautifully.  Now I just have to keep myself from telling everyone it's terrible and they don't want to eat it so I can have it all myself.

Anyway, I don't have much else to report!

~Jess