Thanksgiving is my favorite day of the year. Thanksgiving happens to be Kent’s favorite day of the year too. As luck would have it, the third Thursday of 2011 happened to be worst day of the year for both of us.

Because I had to work this year on Thanksgiving, we scheduled our Thanksgiving to be on Tuesday before the big day. We had no problem with this. We could shove those pictures of our turkey and stuffing in everyone’s facebook faces a few days before they were able to experience it. (Side note, I usually don’t like bragging on facebook but it was the only way I could feel better about having to work at a busy restaurant on my favorite day of the year. Please, don’t judge my social network style revenge to harshly.)

So, not only was the original date of Thanksgiving ruined with my work schedule, our re-scheduled, early Thanksgiving was ruined with a debilitating sore throat/cold/flu. It was absolute misery for the both of us. Sick and weak, we spent almost a week in bed and trying to take care of each other. To top it off, it’s warm here. Imagine having a fever in the summer. It was hell. After gallons of tea, juice, Nyquil, Codeine, and homemade chicken noodle soup were consumed…well, we still felt like crap!

Early Thanksgiving passed, the real Thanksgiving had passed, my dad finished his famous smoked turkey, candy was being made at Rita’s, and photos of everyone’s special day were posted and liked about a million times on facebook. Both of us really started to feel so far away from it all. Even though Thanksgiving was over for everyone else, I had an undeniable urge to cook. Although still homesick, our coughing was starting to fade, so we rescheduled our glorious day for this past Monday, the third Monday of November.

I started my cooking on Sunday. We had a vegan friend coming, so I wanted to make her something special. I made a red-wine braised veggie shepherd’s pie with carrot, potato (yes, I know it’s topped with mashed potatoes, but come on, can you ever have enough?) green beans, onion, and local purple Makawao sweet potatoes. I used some Milwaukee Ave. seasoning purchased from The Spice House, which I thought gave it a very “meaty” and savory flavor. I was really happy with the way it came out. I made my pumpkin pie on Sunday too before I called it a night.

On Monday I started by brining my turkey. Up at 5:30am, I put on my only apron, which we purchased on our road trip, and was able to check nearly everything off of my list before I went to work at 11. Mashed potatoes, candied purple sweet potatoes, green beans, stuffing, shortcakes for our papaya and grape shortcake, whipped cream for the desserts, crescent rolls and turkey in the oven. Cooking all of it made me so happy!

By the time I got back from work Kent and I had a nice snacking lunch of cheese and crackers, summer sausage, and bloody marys. Finally, I made the gravy (the most important part of the meal) and we were good to go. Thanksgiving had arrived! We feasted and drank with good friends, what could be better than that?

I wish everyday was Thanksgiving.