An Alternative Thanksgiving

Homemade Braided Bread

College is always a weird time. It's a transition of some kind for everyone. For me it's all about the consequences of living 1300 miles away from any form of relation to myself. Sure I chose to move this far away and I really do enjoy the distance most of the time. So long story short, I knew this was coming. It was never a shock to anyone that I decided to spend this Thanksgiving in California.

The original plan was to stay so I could work a bit and to cook my own Thanksgiving with a few close friends. Of course as they say, best-laid plans of mice and men oft go astray; as did these. Almost every bit of this plan fell apart, in fact. Close friends became not friends at all and the camp I planned to work was cancelled altogether.

Lucky for me, I have a truly gracious friend, Socho, with an even more gracious family. She needed a ride home so the two of us drove to her house and I shared Thanksgiving, for the first time, with someone else's family. I will be the first to admit that it might have been a tad awkward, even though they were so kind and accommodating in every way. I really didn't want to butt in on their family time. But honestly, it was a relief for me to leave Humboldt County, I'm sort of a "move about" type so three months anywhere is enough to give me the "rampin' sallies" as my family would call it.

My family is pretty standard when it come to Thanksgiving.
Cooking.Football.Eating.Football.Dessert.Football.Sleep, with football still on.

This is my account of Thanksgiving with the family that wasn't mine:

Two of the most important bits of information, Socho is vegan, her mother is a veggie, and her father is a carnivore. Strange combination? Yes. Also Socho's mother is English, so she feels no regret in not following tradition in this case.

Dinner was fairly standard, but it included Toferky sausage, which I admit I really enjoy eating and goes shockingly well with cranberry sauce. In fact, I almost liked it better than the Turkey her father made for him and I. After dinner we watched an array of TV shows from home improvement reality TV to dogs who ate things they shouldn't; which featured, as we should have expected, a multitude of pet vomit. Dessert was actually furnished my me. I went on a baking spree and made both a loaf of bread and Red Velvet Cake Truffles which were consumed for dessert. The only regret: No pie! Although I'm sure my arteries thank me.

On the whole it was not a bad experience, but it did make me realize that maybe the real tradition that should not be broken is spending time with your family no matter how odd or mundane they might be. Cliche, I know and I'm sorry, but I speak the truth.

The glorious and successful Red Velvet Cake Truffles