Pagpapasalamat

After yesterday's Thanksgiving dinner at home we were fortunate enough to be invited to our good friends' house for a second round. I always feel some level of guilt at eating out or at someone else's house when our fridge is jam-packed with leftover. However, having had Mel's cooking in the past and enjoying their company I was able to let that guilt roll off my back.

This was the Wombats' first trip to Brooklyn meaning they have tackled three out of the five boroughs in less than five months. I'm not sure when we'll be able to get them to Queens (or why) and if we can save some money away we may be able to afford the toll to get them over the Verazzano bridge to Staten Island.


Mel and Jule are great hosts and made a very nice spread featuring some classic Thanksgiving dishes as well as some family favorites.

I'm always intrigued by the items found on some people's Thanksgiving tables. Usually this is just some form of family recipe from their cultural background. To me this always seems exciting to me. Then I realize that, having French-Canadian and Italian ancestry most people's Thanksgiving dinners did not consist of lasagna or meat stuffing. Jen says she had never really had chicken parmesan or linguine with clam sauce until she was in her teenage years and got it at a restaurant. For me these were meals we had on a weekly basis.



Mel and Jule's Thanksgiving dinner included lumpia and pancit. This was a big draw for me in that I've had Mel's pancit and lumpia in the past and I'm a big fan. Having it alongside stuffing and sweet potatoes was an exciting diversion from my normal Thanksgiving experience. While it seems wild and exciting I had to remind myself that it's actually not much different from pairing Lasagna with stuffing. One family's tradition is another family's exciting twist on a classic theme.


After dinner there was a bit of a Poopsplosion™ incident. Elliott is still taking his amoxicillin which seems to do nothing in the way of making his ear infection and conjunctivitis just clear up on their own but has some unfortunate gastrointestinal side effects. This means a lot of diaper changes and a lot of spare clothes were packed.


Unfortunately we forgot the clothes in the car and, by some miracle, Mel and Jule had a spare set of pajamas in Elliott's size from when their son wore it four years ago. This was extremely lucky for us and I am committing to leaving a few random sets of clothes around our apartment for the visiting parents of the future so that they may be beset with such good fortune as we were.


Martin was not bothered by Elliott's incident and slept in an incredibly uncomfortable position on the couch through the entire episode.


After returning home we got the Wombats to bed which required a bit more of letting them cry it out than normal. Still they were both asleep a bit after 9:00 and I poured myself this Nut Brown Ale from Samuel Smith's Brewery to cap off the evening. That is no better way to top off a holiday than with some old-timey British beer. Samuel Smith's is a beer steeped in the tradition of the 1700s and 1800s. I can only assume that nostalgic attitude is why their website is steeped in the tradition of the 1990s.

Overall I think the Wombats have enjoyed the three Thanksgivings they've had this year. It seems unfair that through all of this delicious holiday food they can only eat milk. Soon, however, they will be onto solid food. This solid food won't have anything to do with the holiday, but by next year they'll be able to have some of it. Then they can systematically begin rejecting and hating all the food that we eat.

Then the holidays will truly be complete.