three days to go: menu #1 it is!

After an almost unanimous feedback vote, menu #1, featuring the Alsatian-brined turkey, champagne mojitos and dulche bread pudding (among many others), has been crowned feast of the year.

Now the real work begins.

I've already begun tidying the house—somehow that always means it gets much more messy before anything gets better— and finishing some decorating touches, including window film, artwork and, of course, bathroom painting.

It's just my luck, though, that our second bathroom's walls don't seem to like paint. After a thorough priming and two coats of paint, the edges are messy from paint seeping through the tape, and some chunks of the walls look drippy and uneven. Sigh.

On the plus side: I've painted the bathroom an appley warm olive hue that I'm going to dress up with bejeweled accessories, like studded picture frames, rhinestone curtain rings and other dainty things. It's a confusing color, that "bamboo leaves" green. Part masculine, part regal, part mid-1970s. But like most other borderline ugly/beautiful things, I totally dig it.

I picked up the bathroom paint on my wild Sunday trip around Northeast Ohio, making grocery trip #1 (of three) to Trader Joe's. Whole Foods and Heinen's to follow. I've been really lucky so far finding most of the things I need for Thursday. But it has only just begun.

Because I'm cooking big time for the feast, I'm intending on not cooking much at all this week. So, I just returned from a five-mile run and will feast my chompers on... High Fiber O's from Trader Joe's.

Talk about gourmet.