When I went down to the vegetable garden yesterday morning I saw that frost had killed the basil and dahlias.  However, I was still able to get huge handfuls of parsley, sage and tarragon, which I chopped and added to the stuffing for our turkey dinner.  We had it last night because The Boarder’s in town and may have to leave soon.

Nicky took the prize for eating the most food.  He had two full plates of turkey with all of the homemade accompaniments such as the cranberry sauce, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, Brussels sprouts and yams topped with marshmallows.

He then had three pieces of pumpkin pie for dessert, laden with whipped cream.  The Boarder also ate two plates of food, but Luke could only choke down a bit due to the amount of Jaegermeister he’d consumed the night before.  Luke and I are sadly both panty-waists in the drinking department.

This week I finally decided to stop acting childish and actually confront an ugly question: how many fruitcakes do I have, and how many will I need?  I just hate things like that, as they require counting and looking at records.  Did I mention that I failed math?

Actually, the only reason I passed math 11 on the second try was because the teacher made me promise never to take math again.  I said, “Why would I?”  Little did I know that a few years later I would be in graduate school, taking something evil called statistics.  That was quite a traumatic experience for all involved.

I suppose the fruitcake count was a good exercise, as when I counted what I have on hand, and by projecting how much I’m going to need, I could see that I have to work like a lunatic for the next two months.  Hence, I have to say I’m very thankful for the garden frost, as it means I can at least stop spending time on watering.

Plus working like a ferret on caffeine helps remove me from more troublesome situations.  As I was baking away, I could hear Denis drilling into the wall a few feet away.  I hated to ask what he was doing, but did.  He said that he was putting hooks into the wall so that he can hang his hockey equipment on it when he comes home.

This was the perfect opportunity for me to smile, say nothing, and return to the safety of my kitchen.  I then took my mind off murder by practicing my multiplication tables, which I need to do anyway.  “If I make four batches a day, at 14 fruitcakes a batch…..”