For the past many years, Chris and I have headed back east for holidays with the family. While we love our families, and spending time with them – we wanted to experience a different winter and decided to stick around the desert southwest this year.
We’ve been caravanning with our WheelingIt buddies the past month, and discovered that both Nina and Chris would be celebrating birthdays this week. We opted to make it their holiday, and downplay Thanksgiving a bit.
Last evening instead of trying to figure out how to make a turkey and trimmings in our RV homes, we decided on a meal we’d all love creating & sharing together. Our nomadic buddy Kerri has caught back up with us here in the desert, and we invited her along too.
We all converged on a smorgasbord of grilled fish tacos, guacamole, salsa, chile rellanos, margaritas and Cuban flan.
All RV-homemade to the sounds of salsa music!
We have been the fortunate beta testers of Nina & Paul’s recent experiments in making homemade corn tortillas, and last evening Paul decided to take it a step further – making them on the grill. They came out just as yummy, just were a bit slower in the making – which added to the social fun.
Nina mixed up the intoxicating drinks, hand squeezing the limes.
We did a mixed grill of wild caught Mahi Mahi and Salmon, topped off with greek yogurt broccoli slaw with almonds & apples. There was pre-dinner nomming on some of Chris’ amazing guacamole.
Kerri impressed us with her yummy chili rellanos.
And then Paul surprised us with a birthday flan he whipped up from an old family recipe.
Yum, I’m still salivating from all the delicious flavors!
Our menu may not have been overly traditionally Thanksgiving, but the sentiment was definitely there. Us nomads have much to be thankful for – conscious choice in our lives, wonderful communities we’ve made on the road and the adventurous attitude to look beyond and make things our own.
We could not be more thankful to be surrounded by so many like minds, and share in such a special day together in the warmth of the desert southwest.
And of course we also miss our families, who are so loving and supportive of our life choices. Thankfully, there is technology that makes the distance seem a little less and time was spent in video chat sharing the love.
Yep…Holidays were the hardest for me (not being with old friends and family) when we first started…but when we started making new friends…traditions changed and new ones were established…just more of the lifestyle we have chosen….gald your holiday was good and the best to the both of you…
Traditions are formed because people do/eat/think the same things over & over again. In other words: Just a little further south, the Pilgrims — and the rest of us! — would’ve been eating jicima and Cuban sandwiches for Thanksgiving! We can enjoy our friends and the family we’ve created… Even if they’re one-in-the-same.
And a pox on those who DON’T use fresh-squeezed limes in their ‘Ritas! 😉
We’ll take our margaritas anyway we can get them.. but there’s something extra special about one handcrafted for sure 🙂
I live for the day when I can load this puppy into the RV!! http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/store/product/margaritaville-reg-tahiti-frozen-concoction-trade-maker/1016310140?Keyword=margaritaville
We know who we want in the neighborhood 🙂
“Us nomads have much to be thankful for — conscious choice in our lives, wonderful communities we’ve made on the road and the adventurous attitude to look beyond and make things our own.” Amen! You guys are living a spectacular dream and are providing a wonderful service to the RVing community!
Thanks.. we appreciate that. If we’re living a dream, it’s definitely a great one we’d like to not wake up from… but we sure hope when we pinch ourselves we realize this is real 🙂
Happy Belated Birthday Chris! Looks like the perfect celebration of thanks to me 🙂
It really was a great celebration.. you can’t ask for much more than great friends, great food and a great location.
You were able to spend Thanksgiving and celebrate birthdays exactly as you wanted so it was a great day.
Absolutely.. any day spent on your own terms is a great one 🙂 Hope yours was great too.
Thanks for sharing…awesome pictures.
Thanks 🙂
You are a speeeedy blogger girl. Love the sunset shots & totally enjoyed our evening together. The perfect Thanksgiving!
Nina
Talk about speedy.. someone was quick to respond (thanks dear!). Our evening together, as have many others recently, was just perfect.