Well it is almost time for Thanksgiving and since it is by far my most favorite holiday of the year I am already preparing for it. This year for Thanksgiving we will be having eight guests in our somewhat small apartment and thus I've got to do my best to make sure it is perfect. Before I jump right into it, first I've got to do what my mother always does, and give you a little background on the situation. First off the reason I love Thanksgiving so much is because it is by far the most thoughtful holiday of the year. When you think about what the spirit of Christmas is supposed to be, Christmas is the last thing that comes to mind for me, the first holiday that comes to mind for me when I think family and friends is Thanksgiving. The only other point I need to cover before I get into Thanksgiving is that at previous dinner parties, like Ryan's visit, most of the time I spend my time playing with friends while my wife runs around preparing appetizers, pouring drinks, etc. However at Thanksgiving the tables are turned and Tomoko (my wife) will be a guest and I will be the perfect host.

So in order to have a flawless Thanksgiving, my favorite time of year and the best holiday of all time, infinitely better than Christmas in every way I decided I need to practice. November 8th and 9th I spent the weekend cooking, on Saturday I went to cooking class and we made this delicious Lasagna. On Sunday morning I got out the good old Betty Crocker Cookbook and made a Puffy Oven Pancake (my first). That got me warmed up and at around 11am I started to work on my apple pie.

All the meals turned out quite good, the apple pie could use a little more sugar but all in all good. It's funny I took the original Apple pie recipe and put in 1/4th the recommended amount of sugar and it was only slightly un-sweet. Half the people that ate the pie said it was fine but its impossible to tell if they are just being nice or really feel that way. Luckily my wife doesn't hold anything back and she told me to cut the sugar in half next time rather than a fourth. That afternoon it was time to start on the chicken. The recipe we are going to use for the turkey we used for the chicken and the chicken turned out fabulous. If our turkey and gravy turn out half as delicious as the chicken did we may not be able to get our guests to leave.

In any case as you can see I'm very excited about this year's Thanksgiving and I can't wait. Naturally I'll be sure to take a lot of pictures and upload a report on Thanksgiving 2008 as soon as I can. Next year in May I will be moving back to the United States so this will be last year celebrating Thanksgiving in Japan for awhile. Good luck to all of you in your turkey cooking adventures and thanks for reading.