It is happy Thanksgiving again, and thankful I am indeed to be going to someone else’s house for dinner. Also, nothing is quite as delicious on a queasy pregnant tum as huge heaps of turkey and mashed potatoes and corn. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm. I plan to still be eating long after everyone else has left the table to work on the clean-up.

I am making the chocolate-crusted pumpkin cheesecake I bring each year, and also a raspberry-cranberry Jell-o salad I make for Thanksgiving and Christmas. I can always find the Jell-o recipe easily in the cookbook: it’s the page that is dyed completely pink from previous years’ spills.

I will give you the recipe in case you want it for next year, because it is indeed delish. Shuss.

The night before you want to make it: Put a 10-ounce bag of frozen raspberries (or I think the ones at my supermarket are 12 ounces, and I use that) in the fridge to thaw, in a bowl to catch the juice that will otherwise leak out of the package and all over your refrigerator, making a nasty surprise when you look inside the next morning at breakfast time.

When you’re ready to make it: In the mixer, put one can of jellied cranberry sauce, plus two 3-ounce packages of raspberry Jell-o powder (I use the sugar-free kind instead, not to save calories but to save “heaviness”: the recipe seems so much more filling with the sugar, and I can’t taste the difference using the sugar-free instead), and mix them up. Then add two cups of boiling water, CAREFULLY, remembering my stained cookbook, and blend it all up for awhile until the cranberry sauce is totally dissolved. Add 2 tablespoons of lemon juice and blend a little more. Pour into a 1.5 quart bowl, and put it into the fridge. Stir it about every 30 minutes for 1-1/2 or 2 hours, and when it seems pretty thickened add the thawed raspberries (and any leaked juice, too). Stir the raspberries in, and then leave the bowl alone to set completely. I usually make this first thing in the morning and it’s ready by suppertime, but if you have your Thanksgiving meal earlier in the day you should make it the night before.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone in the U.S.! Happy Thursday, everyone else!