A brief on the Idaho Thanksgiving

The Texan and I have travelled to Idaho for the long weekend.  Over the years, the Family has accrued a fairly large collection of Thanksgiving regulars (about a dozen, give or take on any given year), but the move to another state somewhat diminished available guests -- even so, one other friend and her son flew in for a shorter visit (they leave this afternoon, we on Sunday).  So we had eight people (three children) for the meal.

One of the "regulars" called yesterday to share the love.  An early question, "How many pies this year?"

"Six," said FemmeDommi.

"Six!  But you have eight people at the table!  This is unheard of!"

FemmeDommi agreed. "We consider it a temporary aberration. And as it happens, two of the six refuse pie (being under the age of 12), so in one sense we still have our average: one pie per pie-eater."


I took a photo, but forgot to bring the cable for transferring photos to my computer.  We had two pumpkin pies, a pecan, and an apple. We had two "surprise" pies (pies we haven't tried before, of which there is always at least one at each Thanksgiving).  The Black Bottom (reputedly a traditional southern custom) proved so delightful that it was even eaten -- with seconds -- by the non-pie eaters). The other, a Butterscotch Cream, hasn't been sampled yet -- we were all so full that it waits for the leftovers meal tonight.

Otherwise, nothing unusual to report in the menu, the conventional Thanksgiving feast with too much food, 90% of which the children wouldn't eat.  We started the afternoon with a long walk at Camel's Back Park, just a few blocks from here.  This park -- positioned at the curve where the plain of the city meets the low grass-and-sand covered foothills -- starts with a conventional playground and tennis courts, but it is the doorway to an extensive several miles of trails for hiking and mountain biking.  Our group split, the youngest staying at the playground (with parents) while the rest hiked a mile or two up to the top of the closest hill.

As I said, I don't have the cable for my camera, so I stole this photo from a post about mountain biking in the Boise foothills from the web.  This is actually taken from a point further than we walked -- we were off to the right by one hill, I reckon.  But we had the similar view of downtown, and our day was actually clearer, so we could see to the snow-topped (low) mountains miles away on the far side of the Snake River Basin valley which Boise is built in.