Monday, November 30, 2009

Thanksgiving dinner 3

For our official Thanksgiving meal, we dined with 1300 other people at the 85th annual St. Boniface Parish Thanksgiving Dinner in Elgin, NE, Pat's home town. Pat has participated in this community event since she was an infant. The menu included turkey, sausage, sauerkraut, mashed potatoes, gravy, corn, cranberry salad, a cabbage and carrot salad, rolls and your choice of pie. And there were hundreds of pie choices. I chose them all ;-)

En route to Elgin, we stopped in Lincoln to give Mizuho a private tour of the Nebraska state capitol. So far, Mizuho has visited two state capitols. We can change that. Everyone should visit every state capitol.

Claire and Mizuho enjoyed the sausage and sauerkraut. A secret sausage recipe is used exclusively for this event. 600 pounds of sausage was prepared for the event, and it was mighty fine, indeed. I bought five pounds of frozen sausage to bring home, but I accidentally left it in Pat's brother Joe and sister-in-law Pam's freezer. Merry Christmas Joe and Pam.

The community feast is held in the Pope John XXIII Central Catholic's gymnasium. In the foreground is Pat's sister Joan, nephew Jon and brother Jim. You can also see Pat peaking over Claire's head. A couple hours after Thanksgiving Dinner, we returned for evening lunch with 465 other people, and for the ceremonious announcements of the 128 raffle winners. Jon won $50 in Elgin bucks. The rest of us got skunked, but we donated to a good cause. In Elgin, the word lunch means a light meal or snack. In fact, it is not uncommon to eat breakfast, morning lunch, dinner, afternoon lunch, supper and evening lunch all in the same day. If you are looking to carb-up, I recommend lunching in Elgin.

Pat and her niece Justine (Jim' daughter and Jon's sister). Relatively speaking, I think they look related.

Claire and Mizuho helped Jim combine corn on Friday. I think Mizuho found Midwest farm life to be quite different than living in her hometown Osaka, Japan.

Pat with her parents and siblings: (L to R) Shirley, Joan, Pat, Jim, Joe and Jim, Sr., aka Bud. Not pictured: little sister Lora.

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