I go all out for Thanksgiving whether we have guests or not.  We used to have our friends from Seattle visit nearly every year for the feast and Black Friday, but alas they moved to Albuquerque.  This year we had my husband’s brother and his wife visit us from Denver.

For the meal, I make everything, including the yeast bread, from scratch.  Everything except for the pumpkin pie and Cool Whip topping which I buy frozen because I hate both and they’re usually pretty cheap to buy on sale this time of year.

So, I had two debut dishes that were big hits–Colorful corn medley and Satsuma mandarin orange cheesecake.  The cheesecake recipe is in the November issue of Cooking Light magazine.  The corn medley is reprinted below from Taste of Home Digest:

Colorful Corn Medley (from Taste of Home Thanksgiving 2009)

1 med green pepper, chopped (I used a yellow one which wasn’t the best color but was the only pepper I had)
1 small onion chopped
3 tablespoons butter
4 cups of corn (9 ears fresh or frozen–I used frozen)
1/4 cup hot water
1 (2 oz) jar diced pimentos, drained
1 tablespoon honey
1 teaspoon salt
Dash of pepper
1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese
4 bacon strips, cooked and crumbled

1.  In a large skillet, saute green pepper and onion in butter until tender. Add corn, water, pimentos, honey, salt and pepper.

2.  Bring to a boil. Reduce heat; simmer uncovered for 8-10 minutes or until corn is tender. Sprinkle with cheese and bacon (though I mixed mine in to distribute it).

Only my husband ventured out for Black Friday.  He left around 4:15 AM to go to Best Buy.   I’m surfing the web in my jammies, having already checked my company’s Canadian bank account clearings to make sure no counterfeits slipped through.  It wasn’t a holiday in Canada yesterday or today–they had theirs last month–and doing the account review on Thanksgiving and the day after is my annual gift to my staff who normally do it.

I may do some online shopping later, because that’s how I like to shop now.  Black Friday on the web is more like Green Friday–you can spend a lot of cash and never have to fight a single crowd.

We’ll see what… interesting… items hubby comes back with.  He sometimes gets caught up in the frenzy of the hunt.  Last year, he stocked up on flash drives (??) and digital picture frames.  Admittedly, the latter made great Christmas gifts.  This year he’s in search of a $500 HP computer,  including monitor, only eight of which will be at each Best Buy store today.  Lots of luck to him.