We survived Thanksgiving.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Tina, rest her carcass. Though we can say she's been extraordinarily giving of herself over the past week. We've included a photo of the old bird (above) in all her plump 'n' juicy glory, straight from the oven.

The LaReau Sisters enjoyed a very typical holiday experience (for them), which began with a shopping excursion two nights before the big event. Kara and Jenna waited until later in the evening to go to their neighborhood supermarket, hoping they'd avoid the crowds. No such luck. Here are some things we saw that night:

1. The coffee boy at the in-store Dunkin Donuts, who sports a puka-shell necklace and proclaims his coffee is the "best around," though we're not clear on how wide a range he's been polling. Puka Boy asked if we were sisters, and when we said yes, he said his second guess would have been that we were brothers. Perhaps his necklace was depriving his brain of some much-needed oxygen.

2. A hyper little boy who so could NOT keep still in the checkout line that his mother picked him up and put him in the shopping cart. He then grabbed both sides and began jostling the cart, screaming at the top of his lungs, "I'M A RODEO COWBOY! I'M A RODEO COWBOY!"

3. A woman with nothing in her cart but a turkey, whipped cream, and toilet paper. Now that's a party.

The next day, Kara and Jenna went to another grocery store to buy everything they couldn't find at the first place. Then they started cooking and baking. This began at 3pm on Wednesday afternoon and continued until 11am Thanksgiving morn. Chutney was cooked, two kinds of stuffings were assembled, potatoes were cut and seasoned and boiled and roasted, green beans were sauteed, and pumpkin and apple pies were baked. And throughout this expertly-choreographed culinary ballet, Tina was undergoing her own metamorphosis — soaked in brine, roasted to perfection, drained of gravy-inducing pan drippings, and carved with Jenna's brand-new, very sharp electric knife. Let it be said that Jenna knows her way around a bird, and a knife.

How long did it take to eat this meal, you ask? Thirty-five minutes.

The LaReau Sisters were left wondering, as they are every year, whether it's all worth it — the stress, the sleep deprivation, the over-caffeination, the dehydration. The answer is yes, because of one simple word.

LEFTOVERS.

So, tell us — how was your holiday?

Lately, Kara and Jenna have experienced some interesting food cravings. The LaReau Sisters went grocery shopping earlier this week, and Kara made a fortuitous impulse buy: a bag of dark chocolate-covered pretzels. Suffice it to say that the pretzels did not last two nights in our house, and we're not even sure what happened to the bag.

Then, last night, Jenna made one of her famous dinner treats: hotdogs and baked beans. This is not any old country picnic fare. Jenna jazzes up the hotdogs with sauerkraut and bacon, and adds applesauce, fried onions, and OH YES, MORE BACON, to the beans. It is delicious, inspired comfort food.

Happily, there were enough hotdogs, sauerkraut, and beans to have leftovers tonight. When Jenna brought out the plates, Kara's eyes lit up. Something about the meal, about having comforting foods cooked for her, then served up on a cold rainy November Friday night, hit exactly the right note. This was exactly the food she was in the mood to eat, and it was sitting right in front of her. But not for long. Soon, Kara was making a fatal error of judgement. She was asking for another hotdog.

(It should be mentioned that Kara has an unfortunate problem when it comes to eating; she eats too fast, and doesn't realize she's full until it's too late. She's like one of those pigeons at the park who will basically eat and eat and eat until they explode, because they're too bird-brained to know their stomachs can only hold so much bird seed.)

In hindsight, Jenna realizes she saw the signs. She saw Kara's smiling, seemingly-hungry face. She saw Kara's bright, ever-so-slightly glassed-over eyes. While she served Kara that second hotdog without giving it another thought, it became clear all too soon that both sisters had made a mistake.

"Um," Kara said, looking a bit sweaty and pale after a few bites, "I don't think I can finish this."

"I was surprised you wanted seconds to begin with," said Jenna. "You're not usually a two-hotdog kind of girl."

"Yeah. That was a bad decision," said Kara. She laid the last nubbin of hotdog-with-sauerkraut on her plate, careful not to look at it.

"Maybe you should drink some more water," Jenna advised.

"Next time I ask for another hotdog, don't give it to me, okay?"

"I'll know before you even ask," said Jenna. "Because you have that frenzied look on your face when you think you're hungry. The Hotdog Face."

"I don't feel so good," said Kara, laying her head down on the dining room table, burping softly.

Here's a window into the first night of the Lareau Sisters' cable-less life:

6pm Kara looks at onscreen TV guide, notices that Cold Case Files is on A&E; so close, yet so far away. Tries to watch a rerun of That 70s Show. Instantly reminded of physical aversion to Wilmer Valderrama. Dry heaves commence.

6:30pm Have to use Everyday Italian cookbook to make dinner, as Giada Di Laurentiis' show is now off-limits to us. Pesto-and-sundried-tomato tortellini does not turn out half-bad, though we have to sit at the dining room table to eat it and not in front of TV. Weird to eat dinner facing each other.

7:30pm K-Hubs retires to his office, aka Man Cave, to play Gran Turismo 4.

8:00pm Thankfully, Gilmore Girls is on, though the LaReau Sisters do NOT approve of Lorelai and Christopher getting back together, especially in Paris (the city, not the character). Someone on the show is eating Chinese food. It looks good.

8:30pm Kara and Jenna run out to pick up Chinese food. Return just in time to catch the end of GG and learn that Lorelai and Christopher got married. Drown sorrows in egg rolls and vegetable lo mein.

9:00pm Thank god (or Rob Thomas, same difference) for Veronica Mars.

9:05pm Kara begins to regret eating Chinese food, especially as egg rolls and lo mein are not proving compatible with pesto-and-sundried-tomato tortellini.

9:15pm Jenna wonders why Enrico Colantoni (Veronica's dad) has never been tapped to play Gianni Versace. Casting directors, take note.

10:00pm LaReau Sisters begrudgingly begin watching Law & Order: SVU, though the absence of Mariska Hargitay and the super-tightness of Christopher Meloni's shirts (seriously, you could see what he ate that day) prove too much for Kara to bear.

10:30pm Kara calls it a night.

11:00pm Jenna goes to bed, though can't lull herself to sleep watching Alias reruns. Puts on DVD special features of Elektra, which prove too engaging to ignore. Unfortunately, special features last several hours.

2:30am Jenna calls it a night. Or, more accurately, morning.

We are in crisis mode here at LaReau Sisters headquarters. Something horrifying has happened. No, it's not flooding in our basement, or a rogue squirrel sighting, or the misplacement of one of our cats. All of those we could handle, and have (FYI, Pearl was hiding in Kara's closet the whole time). No, this is worse. Much worse.

They've turned off our cable.

Evidently, we've been receiving the Premium Package for the past year instead of the Basic Package (what we pay for). This was a mistake on the cable company's end, not any attempt on our part to scam cable illegally (because that would be WRONG). In any case, we now receive channels 1-24, up to Discovery, and we still get HBO and SHO and something called a Sports Package (for K-Hubs). But GONE is the Food Network and our Other Mother, Paula Deen. Gone is A&E and Court TV and HGTV and all the other delicious, delightful, disturbing distractions we so adore. Gladly, we would have paid the extra amount to upgrade to the Premium Package, but did the cable company ask us? Nooooo. In a not-so-brilliant marketing move, they merely switched those channels off.

Of course, now we're going to have to call the company and have them switch the channels back on and probably pay some ridonkulous re-activation fee, which we will gladly pay, because we are desperate. But in the meantime, what are we expected to do without our beloved cooking and renovation and gory forensic shows? Work? Clean the house? Actually talk to each other?

Oh, the humanity!

As you may have guessed, Halloween is the LaReau Sisters' favorite holiday. But their favorite food-based holiday is, hands down, Thanksgiving. For the past few years, Kara and Jenna and K-Hubs have hosted Thanksgiving; this year will be no different, save for one thing. This year, Jenna will be making the turkey.

Usually, Kara and Jenna's mother has brought the turkey, pre-cooked and pre-carved. Jenna would like to give it a try this time around. She's no stranger to the bird; several years ago, when the LaReau Sisters' mother fell ill with the flu on Thanksgiving Eve, Kara and Jenna stayed up all night and made the whole meal themselves. Jenna was in charge of making the turkey, whom she named Sheila, because you should really be on a first-name basis with someone if you are going to reach for their giblets. Kara was in charge of making the stuffing, which would have been a relatively easy task, were it not for the fact that instead of a single loaf of bread in need of cubing, their mother had left two large bags of dinner rolls, all of which needed to be de-crusted. For hours that night, Kara and Jenna sat with paring knives, carefully flaying each and every stale bun. Soon, the extraordinarily sleep-deprived LaReau Sisters proclaimed themselves "expert bun-shuckers," and the handy phrase "dumber than a bag of bunskins" was born.

As Jenna is a big fan of the Good Eats cooking show, she will be taking a tip from Alton Brown and brining the turkey, which will involve submerging the bird head-first in a bucket filled with seasoned vegetable stock. This method eliminates basting, and is akin to giving the bird a spa day, only with a much hotter sauna afterwards.

Jenna has also purchased an electric carving knife, and proclaims, "I know how to cut a bird." Consider this a warning.

Does anyone else have any interesting plans for T-giving? Any good recipes? Any interesting names for their turkey? (We already have ours picked out: her name will be Tina, pronounced with a thick Long Island accent, i.e. TSEENA.)

"There are three things I've learned not to talk about, Charlie Brown: religion, politics, and the Great Pumpkin."

Last night, Kara and Jenna celebrated Halloween by eating apple pie and watching It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and Disney's Legend of Sleepy Hollow. If you don't recall the latter, it's from the late 1950s and is narrated and sung by Bing Crosby; word has it that some of its characters and settings were inspirations for Disney's Beauty and the Beast (Sleepy Hollow's Brom Bones, for instance, is a dead ringer for BatB's Gaston). It's also pretty scary towards the end, and features an edge-of-your-seat chase scene; Kara bravely resisted the urge to cover her eyes as she did when she first saw the show thirty-or-so years ago.

You might be surprised to learn that our house was closed to trick-or-treaters this time around. We decided to take a break, as we've had bad experiences in years past. These include (but are not limited to) surly teenagers who think that pulling up their sweatshirt hoods counts as a costume; children who attempt additional dives into the candy bowl after they've already been given a generous fistful of KitKats; and parents who think they can help themselves after their progeny have already partaken of our Halloween bounty. This brand of greedy-grabbiness brings us down, which is NOT the mood we want to be in on our favorite holiday. We strive to honor Halloween with the utmost sincerity.

For, as we all well know, only then will the Great Pumpkin appear.