The Thanksgiving problem

by Jon Sullivan - 2020-11-16 - Status

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Not going to do the family Thanksgiving in Montana this year. Actually.... Not doing it at all this year.

Long story short - The WoW expansion release is Thanksgiving week this year. And while the Thanksgiving cooking fest has been a core part of my life for the last 22 years, the WoW expansion is not something I can miss. So 24/7 video games rather than 20 hours cooking. I went all in on my vacation time and will be bunkered down and unreachable outside of game for 2-3 weeks.

But........ Just abandoning the yearly cooking challenge to play video games will be lame. So I'm going to try to spend the next week cooking the stuff I would have cooked had it been a typical year. Like one a day or something. I made the dish shown here a couple days ago. Blackened salmon with salsa verde and black garlic butter. Also made a smoked salmon mac & cheese. And some Irish cheddar potatoes au gratin with bacon and mushrooms. Tonight may be (depending on motivation) Nashville hot chicken wings with cranberry BBQ sauce. Tomorrow looks like chopped beef sliders with blue cheese and peach chutney. Thinking about an Instagram sort of prawn salad with green goddess dressing, heirloom tomatoes and charred sweet onions. You get the idea.

"What the %$#@ why??!!", someone who doesn't know me well might ask.....

It all goes back to the crazy summer of '94 in Missoula Montana. Among all the other shit going on during that period, I finally decided at the age of 31 that I needed to grow up and work out how I should live my life. Like.... goals and crap.... meaning..... purpose..... a plan. In the end I worked out that the minimum I needed to be happy and consider my life successful was 1) a job in programming, and 2) playing video games every chance I had. Nearly 30 years later and it turns out that stupid conclusion was 100% correct.

Thus, when it comes down to either Warcraft or Thanksgiving, I don't need to think long and hard. The math was already set in stone back in '94. Some traditions will stay though. I'll be playing with a plate of brie and pate at hand, and a glass of champagne. See you in-game.

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