Turkey 0 Mom 6 Green Death 2, another semi victorious Thanksgiving bird served up without a hitch.

Happy Thanksgiving all! I hope you all have had a wonderful day surrounded by family and friends. What a day to be thankful for yet again. I have been blessed with a day surrounded by my family, wonderful food and lots of laughter playing games. My mother, aunt and uncle drove from far away to celebrate with us and added to our regular wonderful Thanksgiving guests. The weather was cold, but the roads were good so everyone was able to make the trip safely. I ventured out of my comfortable turkey routine and tried something new this year. I used a brine made by Williams and Sonoma and prepared my turkey and some other fixing's after reading one of my favorite blog writers "confessions of a pioneer woman." If you haven't ever read her blogs, wander over and settle in for a real treat. The bird was wonderful! My niece Bailey was the primary pie baker this year and she came up with some wonderful pies and a new creation that was a hit also, it was the debut of her "butterfinger" pie and it sure was a keeper. I'm glad to see she enjoys cooking and trying new things, because I'm sure we will have many wonderful treats from her to come over the next couple of years. My families tradition seemed to be on the slow road of death, mainly due to the lack of enthusiasm from our generation for a dish that we lovingly call the "green death." My wonderfully creative and all female cousins, dubbed it the "green death" a long time ago, and it just sort of seemed appropriate and stuck all of these years. I'm talking about the lime green jello salad that contains cottage cheese, sour cream, walnuts, pineapple and sometimes even shredded carrots. The dish started with my grandmothers generation and the advent of "Jello" in the 50's and seems to somehow show up at every family holiday dinner. Our parents hold on to this tradition as hard as my generation has been trying to destroy it. My brother loves it, but he is the only guy out of eight of us children, so no need to delve to deep into that because frankly, there isn't much in the world of food that my brother doesn't like. I did discover today that my oldest son Clay loves the "green death" and I won't even delve into further research about this either, because he's a 20 yr old bottomless pit right now and isn't to discriminating about what he is eating. It does disturb me though, that these two males will somehow perpetuate this dishes longevity in our family culinary tree. I used to send my mother photos of all of us sitting around the holiday table until she noticed that the "green death" was missing from any function that didn't include her, so my husband and I came up with the wonderful plot to make a plaster of paris "faux green death" to set out on a plate every year to trick my mother's eagle eye with, when we sent her pictures. We even bought the jello mold to hatch this plan with, but that was the year that mom and my aunt and uncle came out to join us for Christmas and the mold had to contain the "real thing" so I never moved forward on my plan to make the "faux green death." What more can I say? Now its seems my son has been lured by the deadly siren song of green jello salads, and I will now have my own "green death" request for it to grace our table each and every holiday. I'm coming to the realization that it will never go away and the only thing that I can compare that to is the longevity of crappy blue Walmart shopping bags in a landfill, green jello salads will outlive me and be here long after I am gone. I wonder if my cousins are having the same problem?