something beautiful

This year, for the first time ever, my mom will not be around for Thanksgiving. That means my sister and I will be responsible for cooking dinner for our family gathering. My sister, having spent the first four years of her married life in a foreign country on another continent, has some experience with this. I, on the other hand, have never prepared a Thanksgiving dinner. In fact, I usually get asked to make the frozen corn, and I’ve been known to burn it. I’ve never even considered making a turkey and in fact, have often joked to my family that if I ever had to be responsible for cooking Thanksgiving dinner, we’d been eating turkey hot dogs. (At this point, you will all be happy to know that my lovely sister is taking care of the turkey – I just have to help hunt down the recipe.) I am, however, responsible for more than corn this year, so I am researching and planning, and I am determined to make something not only edible, but incredible. Right now, I’m eyeing an “easy” pumpkin cheesecake recipe on Tasty Kitchen, acorn squash (which I actually know how to make because I love it and make it on days that don’t start with “Thanksgiving”), and the Pioneer Woman’s stuffing. And fresh-not-from-a-bread-machine bread because I already know how to make that, too, and find it somewhat fun. Stay tuned for an update this weekend…. we shall see if it gets filed under Kitchen Nightmares or not.

… that Mercury is NOT the hottest planet? You’d think it is, because it is the closest to the sun, but no. It actually gets down to -300˚F at night. That’s because Mercury has almost no atmosphere to trap the heat on the side that is facing away from the sun. Add to that the fact that each day on Mercury is the equivalent of 59 earth days, and I think Mercury is making Alaska look like a sunny paradise of mild temperatures. (I only mention this because living in Alaska has been on my mind lately – I have no idea why.)  Daytime temps on the now-smallest* planet reach a scorching 750˚F, making Arizona summers also appear mild in comparison. Not that you’d want to live on Mercury anyway – meteors killed all the dinosaurs there. (OK, I made that last part up – there is no evidence that dinosaurs ever lived on Mercury.) Mercury really does get hit by a lot of meteors, though.

* Since the IAU declassified Pluto as a planet on August 24, 2006, Mercury is now the smallest planet, but we refuse to mention it without an asterisk. We are a little sore about Pluto’s demotion around here….