Those four days went by fast, didn’t they? I swear I was just ordering some Domino’s pizza on Wednesday night, then trying to make clear to the girl at Domino’s that my last name is Baker and not Banker. (Big difference in the sound of those two words, apparently.)But that’s old news, and as usual Sunday night came in the blink of an eye. And I’m somewhat ashamed to say so, but I’ve come to realize that I’m actually sort of happy that Thanksgiving only comes once a year.As I mentioned before, Thanksgiving might be my favorite holiday. I love the food, I love the sentiment behind it, and I for sure love the four days off. Any problems I have with the holiday definitely don’t stem from having time off, that’s for sure.It’s really the food that becomes problematic by Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend.Since we host Thanksgiving, and since my wife knows what’s up when it comes to hosting Thanksgiving, we—and by we, I mean she—gets most of the prep work and a great deal of the cooking done on Wednesday. (Hence the Domino’s pizza. No time to cook Wednesday dinner when your mind is on Thursday’s culinary indulgence.)That means that by the time Thursday rolls around, we’re able to take it easy for the most part and zero in on the main task of the day: a respectable performance in the art of hedonistic consumption of delectable food. And I did pretty good this year. I filled my plate a couple of times and then proceeded to gormandize through every food available.It’s great. Even with the ten-hour-long stomachache I inflicted upon myself, it was great. My wife’s a good cook. Someday these computer people will devise some truly useful technology that will allow me to post the actual flavors to my blog, and then allow you to taste them, but until then, you’ll just have to take my word for it. The food was good.So then why all the whining about being thankful that Thanksgiving only comes once a year?Leftovers.It’s impossible to cook exactly the right amount of food on Thanksgiving, especially if you have a number of guests coming for dinner. How many potatoes should we boil? Is anyone going to eat the Brussels sprouts? How about the cranberry sauce, tart or sweet?And since the worst thing that could possibly happen on Thanskgiving would be to run out of food, we cook a ton of food. Then we sit down to eat and everyone piles their plates high, and at the end we still have a ton of food.Everyone likes leftovers though, so we send a little bit of this home with that person, and a little bit of that home with this person. Not too much though, because obviously we want to keep some leftovers for ourselves.And so late on Thursday we eat some more food, and then another couple of plates on Friday. But then by Friday night I begin to come to a realization: I can’t keep eating like this. The food’s good—some of it’s even better the second day—but for the love of God, if I keep stuffing my face like this I’m going to be dead by New Year’s.Unfortunately, I still have a refrigerator full of food. We pass out a few more leftovers, but that barely puts a dent in the supply.I make a number of proclamations that I’m done with the sweet potatoes, and I just can’t eat another piece of salted caramel cheesecake, but still I eat. I don’t want the food to go to waste, and really, by this point, who wants three-day-old leftovers?We’re at the end of the line now though, and tomorrow I’m back to my usual mostly-vegetarian diet, sensible portions, and no snacking during the day. I’m sure my chronic evening weakness for sweets will not have magically disappeared, but after the past four days of embarrassing consumption, it’s probably best that I try to keep the cravings in check.It’s been a good few days, but the pleasure has turned to work. The time has passed for most of those once-a-year foods.Thankfully!PREVIOUS POST: Search Terms People Have Used to Find my Blog; a.k.a. My Readers are CrazyIF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: It's Thanksgiving, Not Turkey Day+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Hey, did you like reading this? If so, you should Share it on Facebook so you can bring joy to others. You can also find tons of other posts by me here. And you can like my Facebook page, Brett Baker Writes. Please.
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