Happy Thanksgiving!

We arrived a little early for dinner; Curtis was still preparing his delicious stuffing! (He bakes it separate from the turkey.) I brought Cranberry Cinnamon Goat's Milk Cheese with bread & crackers for a pre-dinner snack.

He uses 1 pound each of bacon, kielbasa, & breakfast links along some chopped vegetables & Loves Bakery stuffing mix.

The cheese & crackers are from Kokua Market.

The dinner choices.

My carb-heavy plate.

There were so many desserts there was a separate table for all the desserts! I will be surprised tomorrow if I weigh the same or less than I did last Friday.

My carb-heavy dessert plate.

It cannot go unsaid on this day, that the original feel good story of the First Thanksgiving with the Pilgrims & the Wampanoag is just a myth. The real story is much more dire; but it is what was generally accepted at the time of the Pilgrims arrival. What is not acceptable is continuing to perpetuate that myth. Here is a link to a more accurate description of Thanksgiving & its history & pre-history. 

First thing this morning Mim sent me holiday wishes! This is a modern piece of Thanksgiving that I can support. I met Mim in 2016 just as I was leaving Washington; we have stayed in touch & I have enjoyed our friendship. She is one of the people I see on most of my return trips to visit Kai.

I made a beet proothie this morning. Tomorrow I will need to harvest another batch of lau ʻuala.

Yesterday we got a piece of mail for Lauren ... who lives on the next street. I tried to find a phone number for her but when I Googled I came up with 2 Laurens who lived here; one was on a different street & the other had no phone number. So I walked up to the next block & found she wasn't home; I dropped the package off with her partner.

Since I did not get an order in to Otto Cake before he had the maximum number of orders he takes, I had to get there as soon as he opened to get several pieces of different flavors. Today I got 1 slice each of the  9 different flavors that were baked this morning.

I got to enjoy the sidewalk art while I waited for the previous customer to exit.

Top L to R: Haupia & Peanutbutter Cup. Bottom L to R: Kona Mac Nut, Mint Chocolate Chip, Kahlua, Pineapple, Pumpkin, Lilikoi, & Cranberry.

I skipped lunch today; I was sure I would get enough calories for the day even without lunch. I was right! As always, the Thanksgiving dinner did not disappoint.

I gave Breanna a ride to the Thanksgiving dinner. On the way over she was telling me about going to the AV Restaurant last night; that's the 1st place that Alexis & I tried to go for dinner but they are only by reservation. Her friend had called on Monday for reservations. Breanna said the food was very good but not worth the cost. In the video below the server explains what is in each of the dishes & the couple give their impressions of each dish. This is so not "original" Thanksgiving vibe ... it's very First World decadent. (The blurb with the video says, "The restaurant features a 14-16 course vegan tasting menu for $140." That was $140 per person back in September; Breanna said it cost them $300+ for 2 people, with no alcohol. Glad they turned us away at the door!)

In our defense, all we knew about AV Restaurant was that it was a vegan restaurant. The original vegan restaurant on the block (which we enjoyed) went out of business during the 1st year of the pandemic shutdown & we were hoping this place would replace it. But it will not; Vegan Hills was much more of a normal type restaurant & had a regular menu with more reasonable prices. AV will not replace it.

The Volcano Watch blog discussed the history of the lava lake in Halemaʻumaʻu crater. It also details what has been happening with the lava lake levels with this most recent activity.

The Aix weather app forecast rain all day here in Honolulu; at least where I was it was wrong. We had partly cloudy skies all day. For Kapaʻau, Aix forecast even more rain all day; Big Island News forecast mostly sunny with isolated showers in the morning becoming partly sunny with scattered showers in the afternoon with a 50% chance of rain. The Honomū weather station had recorded 0.29 inches by 6:36 a.m.; by 9:45 p.m. it had accumulated 0.83 inches of precipitation.For Marysville, Aix forecast a whole lot of rain all day & increasing as the day wore on. The morning traffic cam showed wet roads at a time when Aix forecast the least amount of rain!

Kaimukī looking westerly at 6:37 a.m.

Honomū looking northerly at 6:39 a.m.

Marysville looking northerly at 6:43 a.m. HST.

Kaimukī looking northerly at 2:56 p.m.

The surf was largest along north facing shores, then alog west facing shore. The south & east facing shorelines were small to non-existent.

Laniakea (N) at 6:44 a.m.

Hilo Bay (E) at 6:45 a.m.

Waikīkī (S) at 6:46 a.m.

Banyans (W) at 6:47 a.m.

There were 77 new cases of COVID-19 reported today, bringing the total known cases up to 87,183. There were also 6 new deaths reported, increasing the number of fatalities to 1014; currently there are 1497 cases considered active. As of today there were 2,333,865 doses of vaccine administered providing 72.5% of the State population with full vaccination & 85.3% with at least one dose. There are 40 cases currently in the hospital with 7 in the ICU & 5 on ventilators. The 7-day new case average for the State is 95 with a positivity rate of 1.4%. For Oʻahu, the 7-day new case average is 47 with a positivity rate of 1.2%. (When I got home I was too tired to grab all the other stats. I can get the new case article shortly after 9 in the morning.)