Thanksgiving

What a wonderful Thanksgiving we had! Nothing like our normal holiday, but very nice. My extended family was celebrating about 6 hours away, and since Thomas and I both had to work on Friday, we decided to stay home with the parrots instead of spending 12 hours round trip driving to see people for a few hours.

I'm so glad we made that decision! Especially as Thomas will not be around a lot over the next few months, due to work, so the parrots and I got to spend a lot of time with him yesterday!

The greys were eating in the same way; they'd both take a bite at the same time and hold the food in their foot at the same angle.

Of course, then Max would try to hit Stella in the head with the figure-8 swing, or Stella would start chasing Max around the room.

On holidays, my group of running friends meets in the morning for a festive run. It was such a great way to start my day. Then, when I got home, Thomas asked me if I wanted to go on a short hike with him at a nearby park. Of course I said yes. Here is a picture of one of the trails:The sky was so blue! We didn't see a lot of wildlife around; only a few ducks and geese on the pond. There were many people out with their dogs, which was nice to see. Including a lady with two shelties -- Mary, I thought of you! The shelties kept barking at us. Their owner got quite embarrassed and said, "You'd think they'd never seen people before!" We just laughed -- if Rocky were a dog, he'd be a big barker!

Since I had a fair amount of time I home, I decided to make a butternut squash macaroni and cheese recipe that I found here. We had a butternut squash from our CSA and weren't quite sure what to do with it.

Here's the raw squash, ready to be roasted:After it was roasted, I scooped out the seeds and offered them around to the parrots. The caiques and Rocky enjoyed them; the greys, not so much.Another reason that I wanted to make this is I could use my new casserole dish I bought from this gallery. Unfortunately, it's going out of business, but there are still some nice pieces available!

Here was the final product. It was pretty good, and I loved the way the squash meshed with the rest of the food. However, I used soy milk instead of cow's milk, so I think the taste was a bit off from what was intended!We also -- finally -- got around to making applesauce. It was worth the wait, and not nearly as difficult as I thought it would be.

Using the food mill:
The finished product:Enjoying the finished product:I'm hoping to use some in my baking as a replacement for oil, to make the food a bit healthier. The whole process took about an hour, including much unattended time when the apples were cooking, so I see no reason why we can't do this on a regular basis. I just have to figure out how long I can store apples over the winter. I'm sounding like an apple snob, but I have a feeling the reason this was so delicious was the orchard apples we used. I don't know if grocery store apples would be the same.

Not all of the past few days' cooking was a success. Also in our CSA, we got a head of red cabbage. Not wanting it to go to waste, I found a recipe for red cabbage and apples. I had really high hopes, but was rather disappointed. I think I'm just not a cabbage person.One final picture. The greys follow me back and forth between the living room and kitchen, much as Rocky does to Thomas, but they fly instead of walk. When they're in the kitchen with me, I try to interest them in what I'm doing and give them little spurts of attention.

In this case, I gave Max the wrapper from some ingredients I was using. She proceeded to tear it up. I also tried to give some to Stella, but she kept dropping it on the floor. That didn't stop her from keeping an eye on Max, though!
I hope everyone has had a nice few days and has a great weekend! Thomas will be working this weekend, so I'm hoping to get some reading and knitting done.