What better way to spend a week than eating. We started on the Sunday before Thanksgiving with a pre-Thanksgiving-Thanksgiving with a big group of friends. We all brought the dish that we love to have the most that we may not get to have if we're not spending turkey-day with family. (We spend Thanksgiving in Mendocino county looking for mushrooms! But I'll get to that in another article.)

In addition to the fabulous 20lb turkey made by Ian, I brought the wild mushroom stuffing (a favorite from last Christmas) and the lemon meringue pie (my mom's recipe, first time I'd made it!). Also provided: yams, more mushroom stuffing, mashed potatoes (10 lbs of potatoes!!), brussel sprouts, cranberry sauce with candied ginger and orange, butternut squash, spinach quiche, gravy (of course), muffins.....then there was the dessert table: Lemon Meringue pie, 2 Apple pies, 2 Pumpkin pies, pumpkin bread, banana nut bread...I fear I'm forgetting something but I think that's really enough!

Seventeen of us sat down to chow...all friends gathered to eat the bounty of food made by all...The turkey was gorgeous...we ate, oh, about a pound of turkey each when you did the math and looked at the leftovers! All the potatoes vanished—yep, all 10 lbs! The amount of leftovers really was minimal compared to the amount of food we started with.

About 2 hours later we attack the desserts. I was sooo happy with my pie! I was afraid I'd messed it up somehow since I'd never tried making it and it was a lot of time stirring the filling on the stove...but it tasted just like mom's! It made me so happy. Keri is the queen of apple pie now, so her pie was stellar as usual. Everything was delicious and wonderful and we all rolled home with smiles on our faces!

Oh, yes, I need to explain the title of this article. So, if you're playing a game where you need to make someone guess a celebrity's name without saying the name itself (I'm sure there's a store-bought game that uses the same principle), what clues do you give for Ted Nugent? A friend drew that name out of the hat and I knew *exactly* who he was talking about ("the self-proclaimed only true alpha-male," "shoots squirrels with a crossbow") but I couldn't think of his name! So, we go for phonetics...."OK, a Milky Way bar is chocolate, caramel and what?"..."Nougat!...Ted Nugent!!" :)