Thurs, Nov 27 - iPhone Turkey Day

7.35am - cereal w/ Vanilla Hemp milk , walnuts and fresh raspberry sauce, at home11am - tuna sandwich at the Home Turf Sports Bar at LAX - the first blog picture taken with my new iPhone, which Ritesh got for me yesterday as an early Christmas present! Thanks, love! I am very, VERY excited about this...

The good thing about the iPhone is that you can take pictures of places you're not normally supposed to take pictures of, such as airports. The downside however is that the camera really isn't very good. You can't zoom in, and there's no flash, not even a little fill-light. The below was supposed to be the background to the Starbucks Zen tea I was having, along with a chocolate and cherry bumble bar, but I couldn't get both foreground and background focused and well lit in the same picture. But I figured, you've seen plenty of my bumble bars - the background is actually more interesting... I'm so in love with my iPhone, I resolved to use its camera for the entire rest of the day, no matter what.

Somewhere over California, on the flight from Los Angeles to San Jose, where we always celebrate Thanksgiving with Ritesh's extended family. Somewhere under the clouds, Ritesh, his parents and younger brother are speeding up the I-5. Normally, we all drive up to San Jose together, but Ritesh's mom wanted to leave a day early (yesterday) and I couldn't take the day off from work. So the plan was that they would drive up Wednesday and I would follow by plane on Thursday. Until Ritesh's mom changed her mind, partly because Ritesh's dad changed his mind (he wasn't going to come at first, and then he decided he would, but he could only leave Thursday, too). In short, we all ended up leaving about the same time, the folks by car towards the freeway, yours truly by bus to the airport.

Southwest Airlines still gives you a whole handful of peanuts for free!

I landed before Ritesh could make it up there, but Suzanne and Prashant were kind enough to pick me up from the airport. And here we are, eating already: The entirely home-made appetizer spread at Sunita auntie and Ramesh uncle's house in Fremont: fantastic home-made hummus and deviled eggs, veggies and dip, nuts and crackers, and three kinds of home-made cookies: biscotti, chocolate-toffee bars and something that looked like Mexican weddding cookies (the round white thingies in the back). This must have been around 3.30pm or so - another issue w/ the iPhone is that I haven't figured out how to get a time stamp on the picture...

appetizer close-up

They have real seasons in the Bay Area! On a little walk to a field down the street for the annual family football game

moody NoCal sky - the iPhone is perfect for this kind of thing, as it doesn't know how to compensate for low light..

Sometime around 7 or 8pm, Cousin Nimo doing some serious carving on his signature Cajun-spiced blackened turkey - which was outstanding beyond belief! Next up, Vinay is carving up turkey No. 2, the 'regular' i.e. Indian masala spiced turkey. If you're thinking that with two huge turkeys, there'll be lots of leftovers for turkey sandwiches all week, think again. This is a big family! There were over 30 of us again...And finally, here's the full spread: from the top, broccoli coleslaw w/ cranberries, amazing sweet potatoes w/ a top layer of glazed pecans (so sweet, this was dessert for me), mashed potatoes (mashed by Vinay in one of the biggest pots I have ever seen), some of the blackened turkey w/ a cranberry chutney that Nimo's mom whipped up before she left for India this week, some spicy Thai pasta (the main course for the vegetarians amongst us) and some super spicy green beans. A true feast!