and how was your Thanksgiving?

My husband cooked the entire Thanksgiving dinner. He has done most of it for years, and now he has completely edged me out of the kitchen for special meals (except for washing the dishes and setting the table) which is fine because he's a very good cook and loves doing it as long as he can try new things. Anyway, among the clutter on the counters was a small metal bucket, filled with dead leaves from our lawn. (I guess I should have been raking leaves instead of watching football. And yes, I am the football fanatic, and my husband is the chef.) He refused to tell us what they were for, so I envisioned them decorating a platter.

As we gathered to sit at the table he took out his little creme brulee blow torch and set the leaves on fire.

I immediately say, (repeatedly) you're going to set off the smoke alarm; the kids are laughing hysterically; everyone is asking what the h*** are you doing? He says I wanted to bring back memories of the smell of burning leaves; Me: you're going to set off the alarm; Kids: burning leaves is illegal, we don't have that memory. Then the alarm went off. And the smell really was wonderful.

the evidence

My Thanksgiving duties were so onerous that I didn't order flowers, so I got a supermarket bunch, pulled out the best, and added some holly from my garden.

No that is not my dining room table, but it is a dark room and the flash made it look rather lurid, so I took this picture outside. 

lurid

In other news, I've been trying not to complain here about the flood fallout that continues to devastate the Catskills. The last two weekends sales were 10% of what they were a year ago. We really relied on the supermarket (the next closest one is 30 miles away) to bring people to town. Also 2/3 of the businesses are still closed, though a few reopened last week and they finally removed the concrete barriers that closed off most of the town and made it look like a war zone. We've formed a little ad hoc Main Street merchants group and are busy putting up lights and trees and trying to make the town look inviting. Anyway, Harriet, who watches the store when I am not there called me yesterday (Friday), and told me we finally had a good day. Among other things at least a dozen of those racy, kitschy potholders sold. They are making people laugh, which is good. Another way to make people laugh is to put a blowtorch to a bucket of dry leaves in your kitchen near the smoke detector.

Jen