Thanksgiving Day!

Greenwich, NJ
0 nm
Wind: N 15-20 knots, gusting to 30, rain

Our first Thanksgiving on the boat. We have much to be thankful for. Not dying the other day, for instance. Even on Tuesday, when we were heading over here, I thought—if we make it through this, I’ll have a lot to be thankful for on Thursday. The boat. Each other. This wonderful new adventure we’re on, and that we’re both crazy enough to want to keep going, and that we found someone else as crazy as we are. So, a lot to be thankful for.

No turkey to be thankful for, though, unfortunately, although we do have plenty of food. We had planned to buy a little two-pound turkey, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, pumpkin, all that good stuff, but thanks to the gale we weren’t able to make it to a grocery store. The town of Greenwich, winking accommodatingly a mile up the river, was very tempting, but even if we had braved the 35-knot winds to head up there yesterday, I’m not sure anything would be open. Or even if there’s a grocery store in town.

So we had to do with a boat Thanksgiving, which was basically how close we could approximate real Thanksgiving with the canned goods in our storage lockers. Luckily we still had fresh onions and potatoes, as well as an apple, and bread. I made stuffing as fancy as I could without celery or sage, adding dried fruit and nuts and an apple. Then I topped it off with canned chicken, to approximate a turkey with stuffing. I whipped up some mashed potatoes, as good as at home, and a green-bean casserole with our last can of green beans, which had to be beefed up with our last bit of cabbage. Karl made a fruit punch as beverage, and I invented a blueberry-cherry strudel for dessert. The cherries were PCT vintage, and as such had absorbed a little bit of the plastic Ziploc flavor, but the dessert was still a hit.

I took a bunch of dumb pictures of the food I made, and Karl took some silly pictures of me looking exhausted, we listened to music, we did a little dancing. We tried to call our families, but have a really horrible signal here, so were only able to make out a word or two. Still, I am happy and sated and feel surrounded by people who love me, all of the feelings you’re supposed to have on Thanksgiving. What a wonderful holiday.