Thankful for Chef Bondurant

After having an adventurous summer getting married, camping, traveling and living like hippies, my husband Stuart and I are currently situated in a small rental in the Rockies enjoying an early winter and preparing for the upcoming holidays. We have been looking forward to our first Thanksgiving together nearly all year. Well, technically, we have been looking forward to it nearly all our lives. We first met and fell in love with each other during our early teen years, but could not be together until we were nearly fifty. That is a story (or blog) for another day.
Getting back to our first Thanksgiving Day together, I am not sure it started out exactly the way I had imagined. Stuart is a terrific cook. So, since we have been together, I have stepped back and allowed him to do most of the cooking. I must say that I enjoy his cooking and waiting on me immensely, especially since I spent many years cooking for and waiting on others.  Because of his fabulous cooking skills, Stuart of course took the largest part in preparing the Thanksgiving meal, with me sort of acting as his sous chef.   My first blunder today was sleeping until 10:30 this morning. Who sleeps that late on Thanksgiving Day when there are preparations to be done? Stuart was too considerate to wake me up and had already gone to the store to get last minute needed items. He had also done a wonderful job of preparing the turkey. However, it finished cooking much sooner than we had planned, thanks to me of course.  The night before, my head chef had asked me to research the length of time it would take to bake a nineteen-pound turkey.  I dutifully searched the internet and told him to cook it for six hours. However, this teacher with a master's degree must have looked at the wrong information. That bird was done in three and one half hours.
So, there sits the turkey at 12:30 p.m, waiting for the rest of the meal to be prepared. It is way too early to eat now. It was also my job to prepare the stuffing. But, since I snoozed the morning away, Stuart went ahead and patiently made the stuffing while simultaneously preparing the most delicious homemade cranberry dish I had ever tasted.  That left me with the simple jobs of baking the ham and peeling the potatoes.  Well, I tried. At least I can take charge of clean-up without being a slacker. We will see how that goes.