Happy Thanksgiving, poor little neglected blog!  I’m sorry you didn’t get to eat delicious smoked turkey and all the other tasty things that we (my in-laws and I) made today.  Not that blogs really eat much in the way of normal food, or anything…

My in-laws are farmers.  Or rather, my father in law is a farmer, and my mother in law runs their house and does all the bookkeeping for his business.  His job is muddier, but both are pretty important in their day to day life.   Thanksgiving here is a really special kind of thing, since their lives are very dependent on factors outside their control (sometimes as variable as whether the guy at the produce shed feels like being a jerk today.  Or whether it will rain here in the Rio Grande Valley).

One of the coolest things I’ve gotten to do this trip, aside from pouring over my mother in laws embroidery sewing machine and assorted fun project magazines, has been a trip out to the farm itself (their home is some distance away, since the land that he farms is her family’s historically).  I got to see fenugreek, italian parsley, curly parsley, cilantro, dill, and tomatoes.  South Texas’ climate allows for there to be produce in the ground all year long – and winter is one of the best times for greens.  Some of the tomatoes have just turned as well.

So I’m returning back home on Saturday with an armful of fresh cut dill, another armful of fresh Italian parsley, and approximately 10 lbs of tomatoes that were ripe enough to nearly fall off the vines when we picked them today.  The dill I will most likely dry (at least what we don’t eat by early next week), the parsley I’ll hopefully use up.  I’m not sure yet what to do with the tomatoes, other than slice them open and eat them with a little salt, because they really are that good.  Maybe I’ll bust out some old quart mason jars and can them for tasty noms this winter.

All in all though, a very good sort of day, busy for the right reasons, and not at all busy this evening.  I hope all of you had a similarly good turkey day (er… so long as you’re not turkeys – there are no turkeys on the internet right?) and a good weekend as well.

Tomorrow is the beginning of … well … crazy.  Fall is my favorite time of year, and this coming month is the ending of that and the beginning of winter, at least in places that are not full of palm trees.  There are some aspects of the coming season that I do truly love – and some that make me want to do my own dental surgery with rusty pliers.

But that’s a post for another day, so for now, enjoy lots of turkey leftovers, and don’t bug Uncle Ernie too badly for snoring at the football game.

Of Turkeys and Other Things