One of my mother's favorite sayings: "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." She was one of those over-promise/under-deliver type of people, so I always interpreted this to mean she was to go to hell because of all those unfulfilled intentions, and those were just the ones I knew about. Like most of us, she probably had a lot 'someday I would like to...' and 'tomorrow I'm going to call them and ask them to dinner' in mind.

All this came to mind when I just now typed the title of this post. I would like to pretend that every morning of the next seven days I am going to give you some recipes that will get you started on your perfect Thanksgiving feast. But there are a lot of reasons why this is not going to happen.

4. I hate those countdown news stories and TV shows about 'Top Five/Ten/20' somethings. They always end up with 'AANNND THE NUMBER ONE WORST BLAH BLAH BLAH EVER IS/WAS:'

This format has been worn out, especially on the Travel Channel.

3. I'm not blogging tomorrow, I'm driving 14 hours to Las Vegas by way of the Wyoming tundra. I will be listening to audio books on my iPod to fight the boredom. So right there, there would be a hiccup in the countdown.

2. I would have to invest time I don't have into planning the menu I was going to describe for you and I really should be doing things around here to get ready to close up the house.

1. I forget.


Hah!

One year for Thanksgiving I served pumpkin pie ice cream (Baskin-Robbins) with home-made shortbread type wafers. My mother was not one bit impressed, but she's in hell right now regretting all those broken promises, so there.

Southern Shortbread

1/4 pound real butter
7 tablespoons shortening
1/4 cup powdered sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 cups flour
Sugar
Nutmeg

Cream butter and shortening with sugar. Work in sifted flour. Roll about 1/4 inch thick. Cut in shapes or sticks. Sprinkle with sugar and nutmeg. Bake on ungreased cookie sheets at 350 degrees until light brown.