Thanksgiving in Washington 2024

 Tumwater, Washington was the place to be for Thanksgiving in 2024.

Inga and Wendy help organize the Thanksgiving spread

It was a wonderful gathering with the proper fixin's for all the Pacific Northwest Suneson family. My daughter Inga booked a seat on Amtrak to carry her from her place in Portland up to Stanwood Station, only 6 miles from my front door on The Pilchuck. Inga arrived on the evening of the 26th since all of the seats for a day-before-Thanksgiving train trip on November 27th had already been sold. 

The two of us drove the 106 miles down to Sheri's home on Thanksgiving morning carrying a large Costco pumpkin pie (only $5.99! - I'm all about value) and a bag of sad, heavy stones, which was my failed attempt at making my mother's cornmeal yeast rolls. Also gathering at sister Sheri's was my almost-94 year old father, sister Wendy and husband Barth including one of their sons, Brian, his wife Amy and their two young girls, ages 3 and 8 months. 

My family at Thanksgiving

The other part of my family was in Texas for Thanksgiving, my wife and son gathered with our daughter-in-law at her parents home in The Woodlands, north of Houston. I hear it was a great place to be as well. Just can't be in two places at once.

Barth & Sheri work on feast prep

Wendy & Barth come bearing fruit salad fixings

Dad brings his specialty - hand crafted pineapple chunks

Me with my failed & mocked try at baking cornmeal yeast rolls

Inga lights the festive feast candles

Great grandpa gets to know Lena and Ellie

Inga watches cousin Lena (once removed) along with Lena's mom, Amy
in front of the Thanksgiving fire

Lena with Daddy Brian

On A Roll - - not (Waiting for Go-dough)

 

Homemade Cornmeal Yeast Rolls - sort of...

I'm a good catch. 

Or so I once thought. 

I make my bed, I shop for good values, I fold laundry, I take out the trash and I can even cook and bake.

Or so I once thought. 

Sister Sheri announced she was hosting Thanksgiving this year at her home. All the Washington family was coming, including those in Idaho and my daughter Inga from Oregon. Sheri asked those attending to bring a side dish for the feast. I remember fondly the special occasion cornmeal yeast rolls of my mother's. I let everyone know I would bring mom's cornmeal yeast rolls. Everyone was even more excited about Thanksgiving now that THE rolls were going to be served.

Living the lone and isolated bachelor life up here in Washington with my big, new kitchen, I was tasked with baking cornmeal yeast rolls. And in so doing, baking in the good memories of mom and her specialty rolls. It was a grand idea, fitting for the Thanksgiving family gathering.

I needed to shop for the not-so-common ingredients; cornmeal, dry milk, yeast and extra butter ('Don't you dare run out of butter' is what the voice always whisper to me when I shop for my baking items). I motored into Stanwood to get the requisite ingredients listed on mom's handwritten 3x5 recipe card. I wandered the aisles; where is the cornmeal? I found shelves of flour, pancake mix, yeast and all the allied types of baking ingredients - but I saw no cornmeal. Up and down, try another aisle, come back, up and down. Looking, looking, looking... Ah! Cornmeal on the top of the shelf, just about where I thought it should be.

I snagged a yellow box of cornmeal, dry milk, a jar of fresh yeast and extra butter. Back to base where I had flour, eggs, salt and sugar already in my pantry. I was set. I felt good about this Thanksgiving and my contribution.

Inga took me up on my offer for a pre-Thanksgiving visit, riding the Amtrak Train north from Portland to Stanwood, where I picked her up on Tuesday night, November 26 (all tickets sold out for a train seat for Wed. the 27th).    

With the rare event of having my engagement calendar filling up, I decided to bake a batch of rolls Tuesday morning, pick Inga up at the station that evening. Then we'd have all of Wednesday to have fun. We'd drive to Sheri's with my rolls on Thursday, the 28th for Thanksgiving. First item of my planned sequence: Start baking. 

Great disillusionment! I snagged a yellow box that said 'cornmeal' off the shelf, but I didn't read the fine print: CORNMEAL white. Dang it! Corneal should be yellow not white. What good is cornmeal if it isn't yellow like an ear of golden corn? It's no damn good is what it is, if it's white cornmeal. That's my honest opinion and I'm a stickin' with it.

I made a batch of pale, anemic, wan, washed-out lumps of white cornmeal rolls because I didn't want to go back to the store and suffer admitting to my moral failure of not being savvy enough to get a proper box of yellow cornmeal. Perhaps this whole cornmeal yeast roll disaster can be attributed to the bad attitude and angry, deflated vibe that filled my kitchen and doomed my recipe once I realized I was suckered into buying white cornmeal.

I cooked my cornmeal (such as it was), my butter, sugar and salt, added dry milk and stirred in my yeast and mixed in flour. I formed my rolls and waited for the second rising. It never happened. I was dismayed. I waited and nothing happened. It was like waiting for Go-dough - my lumps of dough just sat there. I took them out of the oven, they were heavy like bricks.

Inga and I toured bakeries and art stores in La Conner on Wednesday as planned. Yet I could not shake off the gloom of my failed cornmeal yeast rolls. Late on Wednesday night, I made a second batch of rolls using a different brand of flour. I did the same thing hoping for different results - the definition of insanity. 

I was up early on Thanksgiving morn to mourn my culinary flop and bake last night's batch before we left on the road later in the morning. The results were the same of course.

At Sheri's Thanksgiving table, my cornmeal yeast rolls were mocked and belittled and eventually served. But few wanted to taste these little white dense lumps of sadness. 

There was much to be thankful for at our family feast of Thanksgiving. But if my rolls were the type of food the New World had to offer, I fear the Pilgrims would have never boarded the Mayflower and stayed in England and ate blood pudding.

I think I will try to lift this cursed course of cornmeal cuisine later. But if they fail again, I will just dump my secret shame and tell myself I am still a good catch because I will take out the trash that includes a batch of unrisen white cornmeal yeast rolls.

Going Cold Turkey in La Conner

The Thanksgiving Holiday was looming. I arranged with my daughter Inga in Portland, Oregon to come up to my place on The Pilchuck via Amtrak Cascades Route for Thanksgiving, she'd stay with me and then we two would drive south to Tumwater, WA where my sister, Sheri, was hosting our Suneson Thanksgiving feast. The Amtrak station is 6 miles from my doorstep and a stress-free 5 hour journey for Inga. She intended to arrive on Wednesday, the night before Thanksgiving, but those train tickets were sold out. Inga booked passage on The Cascades train for Tuesday night instead.

I did my Thanksgiving baking earlier on Tuesday before her arrival so that we would have all of Wednesday to play before we left for Thanksgiving on Thursday morning. We decided to visit the charming and mostly undiscovered town of La Conner, about 35 miles from The Pilchuck and on the channel across from Fidalgo Island. It was the day before Thanksgiving and the place was pleasantly devoid of touring throngs and the skies were only partially prone to precipitation on this day.

Inga along the La Conner waterfront
with the famous Rainbow Bridge to Fidalgo Island in the background

Along the way as we strolled into La Conner, we stopped to meet a few new friends; the smiling Xmas Tyrannosaurus Rex, checking his naughty list, and we had the good fortune to meet Zoltar who really does know who is naughty and who is nice - and everything else about you. 

Xmas T. Rex

Zoltar know who's been naughty and who's been nice this year

Of course, we always visit Dirty Biter, a storied mutt immortalized in bronze by his restaurant people who took turns feeding him on his local rounds and took him home when he asked.

Dirty Biter Statue, a must see every time we visit his old hangouts in La conner

Some shops and galleries were closed on account of the pending Holiday, but we enjoyed lots of window eye candy and visited several merchants, making purchases of pastries and a few Christmas gifts as well as listening to a local artist tell stories of his cowboy life from New Mexico to Montana by way of Colorado and tales of fellow inebriated, but successful painters.

La Conner's rain forest grotto on Main Street

Crafty Ladies love Jenning's Yard Shop

We found sustenance at the Calico Cupboard Bakery, I got an apple strudel and Inga bit into an almond croissant. 

  We had a fine day fiddlin' about in La Conner. It was time to drive across the fallow fields of fir Island, cross the Skagit River and get back to grill some steaks while the rain held off.

Fiddler Crab plays us a touring tune in La Conner

Inga does not look crabby in La Conner

La Conner, a jolly jaunt before our Thanksgiving travels to family and feast.

Shotgun Jack Makes His Exit

 

My Jack-o-Lantern stood guard with his grim visage glaring with candle-lit glow across my threshold on a rainy Halloween Night. Jack did his job. His job, as it has been since ancient Celtic pagan times, was to ward away demonic influence from my home. 

My home was visited on Halloween night in 2016 by evil, evil which set my place to the torch and burned it to the ground in an act of felonious arson. I have rebuilt. 

Since then, I take a serious view of the Celtic belief that the world of demonic shadows and evil may cross into this world of the living on Halloween. The veil separating the Dark Netherworld of death and this world of life and light is said to lift at the end of summer and allow demonic shadows to roam the earth on this night. I now take precautions; I carve a large gourd to cast a protective gaze in front of my vulnerable threshold, and I have a 12 gauge shot gun at the ready.

Jack has done his duty staring out before my door. All is now safe as November dawns. Jack begins to molder and he will not last much longer into autumn's short days. I think that rather than let him decay in a slow rot, it would be fitting to send jack out with a bang.

I take my pumpkin down to the cut alder logs, from which I cut my firewood, and place him with a view looking back at the home he admirably protected. I salute him and thank him for his service. I pumped the stock of my shot gun to load a shell into the chamber.

 

So, it comes down to a pun?

Smashing Pumpkins. What would be the best song from the rock music group to end with Jack? We Only Come Out at Night?

We only come out at night,

The sun is much too bright.