Our Thanksgiving table

We wish you all the blessings of health, for which we are so thankful especially this year, work to do as unto the Lord, love to share with your family and friends, both old and new, and plenty to be able to share.

Grandma Dolly's Turkey vase

Our Thanksgiving table

My Pilgrim lady welcomes you to our dinner. We are so very thankful for all that God has done for us this year. Mrs. Pilgrim, just like me, knows that only God could have taken us through the past year. Michael and I picked up this cute figurine on one of our romantic weekends to lovely Taos, New Mexico a few years ago.

My printer was broken, so I couldn't print out a delicious looking recipe for sweet potatoes last week. On Sunday I searched and searched for about a 1/2 hour; but no...couldn't find it. Sooooo, I decided, HEY! I've cooked for 31 years and I've never had a complaint yet. Helps if you love to eat! Well, there are the picky eaters like both of my girls; but they're starting to find out what they've been missing. Anywho, I decided that I could figure out how to make it and went looking for similar recipes with similar ingredients. I found two, and then I combined them. Oh, and I used to be one of those anal-retentive people who had to follow a recipe to a T. I've learned over time how to experiment a little, so don't hold me to amounts or anything else, and let's hope it's a hit! Here's my version:

Deb's Made-up Sweet Potatoes

3 Tbsp. butter
4 medium sweet potatoes, peeled, sliced 1/8-in. thick, parboil for 8 mins. pat dry
minced onion - not too much. (I'm gonna use dried in the jar), sale ground pepper
approx. 6 slices crispy bacon, crumbled
16 oz. cream cheese, softened
brown sugar
1-1.5 Cups Half and Half or heavy cream (I'd use heavy cream, but I always have H&H in the fridge, no sense spending more ;0)
pecans

Preheat oven to 350. Butter large casserole dish (I'll probably use a 9 X 13 Pyrex)
Mix together bacon, pecans and brown sugar
Mix together cream cheese, Half and Half and brown sugar

Layer potato slices
sprinkle with salt, pepper and minced onion
Layer bacon/pecan/br. sugar mixture
drizzle some cream mixture between layers. Keep some to

Top with remaining cream mixture and dot with butter.

Cover with foil and bake 20-30 mins.
Remove foil, return to oven approx. 20 mins. until liquid is absorbed, potatoes are cooked and top is brown.

Question upon waking - Is it a migraine or sinus headache, or is my sinus or sore neck and back causing a migraine?

Answer - Execedrin Migraine, massager on neck, one cup of coffee and then:

To Do
Make notes for blog for later.
Hunt for charm for Traveling Bracelet
Brother Gregory
Check email

To Be
Available to Michael today - will he want to take a drive?
So happy it's Saturday!

Checking email, I found it necessary to reply to one about a Petition for Redress of Grievances to the American Government. As I told my friend, a young father, a pastor and a former soldier, I don't want to be foolish; but this was so well written and such a strong message to our elected officials, that I am keeping it, talking about it and planning to send it after asking the Lord for wisdom. After he had seen combat, he felt it is worded maybe too threateningly, and actually said "it will get you arrested." Another friend who's running for office said "it won't do any good and might get you on some list. It might be better to use stealth and surprise." I didn't ask him exactly what he meant. I didn't have the courage to; but neither did either of these men to simply send a message they agreed with to their representatives. Is it me? Is it that I'm female? I just don't get it. Questions for my Father. If you're interested in reading it, send me an email.

Michael was tired today, and Erin called and invited me to help her shop for a dress for her 5-year anniversary dinner with Brian tonight. There's that sponteneity I need to nurture! What a fun time we had looking for my charm and her dress and filming our treasure hunt. I'll try to get it posted on Fab40 soon. Here's a still shot of the two of us taken this summer.

I have a hunger for knowledge and a sense of abundance that insists I share it. Questions dart around in my mind sometimes so quickly. This is where I want to document them so that I can come back later. Like Gretel returning from her adventure with Hansel, my questions and my answers will be my signs along the road home...home, peace, safety, beauty, contenment, love, friendship, joy, humor, music, Heaven. My life is a prayer, a question or request to my Father, and an answer of Who He Is. I'm constantly seeking answers to questions, mostly serious ones because that's the way I am; but sometimes I'll try to make you laugh.

Today's question comes because my friend, my Gypsy Twinsie Laurie Zieber spurred me to ask it as part of her "If Only Then I" project. You'll thank yourself later I promise, if you join in too at www.lauriezieber.com. My question, which I'm asking myself is, "What if I invest myself in whatever God brings my way instead of protecting myself from being spontaneous?" Right before I was going to turn in my assignment to Miss Laurie, I checked an email from her. It contained a prayer request from someone new to our prayer group, someone who's been struggling with some issues that I have been too. Parenting issues. I may be a little farther along the path than she. There was an answer for me right there in the form of a "whoever", not a "whatever". I didn't have to, but I decided to invest myself, my heart and my experience in trying to ease some of this new friend's pain and weariness. Someone had done that for me, so I had to let the abundance I'd been given spill out in prayer for her.