Thanksgivnukkah Extravaganz[nukk]a[h] 2007

I'm sitting here in my warm apartment listening to the wintry mix pelting my windows, and I'm thinking that sometime in the next couple of hours I'm going to have to go outside and shovel just to get the snow up before the freezing rain really starts up in earnest. This is the only thing keeping me from curling up on my couch under a blanket with a nice, big mug of tea steaming next to me; I don't want to get too comfortable too soon or I won't be able to drag myself outside in a little while. It is beautiful outside, though, white and stormy and there's no one out there and wouldn't today be perfect if I didn't have to shovel?

A car just drove by my house with an engine that sounded like horses hooves clopping on a cobblestone street. Weird.

But I didn't begin this post to write about the glorious winter weather we've been missing for the past few years here in New England. No, I wanted to post about the birth of what I hope to be a new Holiday Season tradition: Thanksgivnukkah. You see, for the past several years my family has had Thanksgiving with this one particular other family, very close friends of ours, but since my family went elsewhere this year and part of their family went elsewhere this year, we decided that we needed to hold an after-the-fact Thanksgiving feast, and while we were at it why not celebrate Hanukkah after the fact as well? The Thanksginukkah Extravaganza of 2007 was born.

Just to give you a sense of what you're dealing with, Thanksgivings with this family have always been a day-long event. Everyone gathers at about noon to begin preparing the meal and the fixings, and this is when the snacking and the drinking also begin. Five hours of eating and drinking later, we're ready to begin the actually Thanksgiving meal. Etc. Etc.

Seeing as we were celebrating Thanksgivnukkah and not Thanksgiving, the menu may appear to be missing a few things, but I assure you it was quite sufficient:

• Fresh smoked turkey (a particular specialty of this family, so glorious, so tasty; the stuff dreams are made of)
• Latkes
• Applesauce (made by yours truly)
  
• Stollen
• Salad (how did something health get in there?)
• Cranberry sauce
• Donuts
• Pumpkin pie
• Pecan pie

Everyone was especially excited about my brother's donuts, but something went tragically wrong with this little guy:

All he wanted was to be a delicious donut

For whatever reason, the dough didn't rise and as a result didn't cook through during frying. Let's take a moment to mourn.

RIP. You looked delicious, but weren't cooked through.

The food was followed by a rousing game of Dictionary (my favorite new word: krukolibidinous. I will use it every chance I get) and a showing of The Sting. Could the day have been any more perfect?