Seeking gratitude

2023's brought a lot to be grateful for. Thanksgiving weekend is about that (and endless food, and those deep discounts on things you were hopefully already going to buy). And looking back, we had some major wins this year:

• We both got our second nationalities!
  
  

  

  Je suis française ! 🇫🇷🍷🧀 And Nicolas is now a card-carrying American. 🇺🇸🦅🏈 

  
  
• Our Neuralink stock got its second comma!
  
  

  

  I guess this makes us millionaires?

  
  
• We got a very good puppy. I'm honestly not sure this last point is a total win as she's definitely reinforced our understanding that we are cat people, but she is so very cute.

Our stupidly cute puppy

And, from the perspective at the tail end of our Thanksgiving weekend, we had another solid holiday even though we didn't host this year. We made my favorite candied cranberries, threw together a nice arugula/apple/pear/pomegranate/walnut/goat cheese salad with a light ginger vinaigrette, rolled out a crowd-favorite apple-bourbon cocktail (pro-tip: probably shouldn't leave the cinnamon sticks in for more than a day), and we were gifted a large enough left-over turkey leg to whip together our classic Black Friday turkey soup without even first going through the hassle of cooking a whole turkey. [Recipes at the bottom of the post]

With all that out of the way, I can't wait to close the book on this year. It's been a tough one, and I've been struggling to be thankful for all we have through the heartache. If the gaping hole in this year's gratitude list hasn't made it exceedingly obvious, our foster kiddo decidedly did not work out. No need to hash out the details here - I kept a totally private blog to work through things as that placement imploded - but I am sincerely grateful that we had the ability to reclaim our home when it was clear he had zero interest in engaging positively or even neutrally in any form of family life. Healing the pupper (who we'd adopted for him) from the experience of that kid has been a journey - she still has some anxiety issues, but they're improving.

It was tough to hang the holiday decor this weekend and accept that there was no point waiting for our forever kid to help us pick out the tree topper - I ordered a nice geometric star on Black Friday sales. I found all the extra rolls of wrapping paper I'd bought on the post-Christmas sales in preparation for our first holiday as parents. I've struggled with wrapping my head around the anger and sheer hatred a child could carry, and I can't figure out how we try again without risking getting back on the same roller coaster - I'd love to help make a kid's life better and hopefully form a familial bond in the process, but Nicolas and I completely agree that nothing is worth a repeat of the child of the summer of 2023. Living with the uncertainty, with the reality of this year's broken dreams, and without any clarity of action to take to move forward toward the goal of successful fostering/adoption has left me in a bit of an existential crisis.

There's not much more to say on the matter, so without further ado (and let's be frank, to make next year's Thanksgiving that much easier for me to shop for), here are the latest additions to our Thanksgiving menu:

Arugula/pear/pomegranate+ salad
Serves 6

Salad ingredients

• 1/2 cup of raw pecans
  
• 5 oz. arugula
  
• 1/2 cup of crumbled goat cheese
• 1 Barlett pear, sliced or diced
• 1 Honeycrisp or Gala apple, sliced or diced
• 1 pomegranate's worth of arils
  

Dressing ingredients

• 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
• 1 tbsp Dijon mustard
• 1 tbsp maple syrup
• 1 tsp of finely grated fresh ginger
• 1/4 tsp fine salt
• 10 twists of freshly grated pepper

Mix all the salad ingredients together. In a separate bowl, mix all the dressing ingredients together. Toss just before serving.

Black Friday leftover turkey soup

Ingredients

• 1 turkey carcass
• 4 quarts of water
• 1 (28 oz) can of whole peeled tomatoes, chopped
• 6 small potatoes, diced
• 4 large carrots, diced
• 1 large onion, diced
• 2 stalks of celery, diced
• 1 1/2 cups shredded cabbage
• 1/2 cup farro
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp savory spice mix
• 1 tsp dried parsley
• 1 tsp dried basil
• 1 large bay leaf
• 1/4 tsp ground pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon paprika
• 1 pinch dried thyme

Put the turkey in a pot with water. Bring the water to a boil, then reduce to a simmer for one hour. Remove the carcass. Strain the broth. Pull the meat off the carcass, chopping as needed, and return to the broth. Add in all other ingredients. Keep the soup at a simmer for at least one hour until the vegetables are tender.

Apple-bourbon cocktail

Serves 15

Ingredients

• 32 oz. fresh-squeezed apple juice/cider (non-alcoholic)
• 8 oz. cranberry-vanilla simple syrup
• 24 oz. bourbon (or less by taste)
• 5 cinnamon sticks
• 1 sliced green apple

Mix all ingredients. Allow the cinnamon sticks to sit for at least a few hours, but remove them after a day if storing the cocktail. Serve the cocktail over ice or cut with sparkling water (optionally ginger-flavored).