Thanksgiving

Our crowd was a little smaller than usual this year, with most of my family elsewhere. It was still fun with the handful there! We hosted Thanksgiving at our home this year, which when I told my doctor he told me I was very brave being 8 months prego. hah Luckily my awesome sister was here to help out, otherwise I think I may still not be walking. :)

Even with a smaller group we wanted all the fixins, it was still going to be a huge ol’ feast! The plus side this time was there were plenty of leftovers! Yay! :) Anytime my whole side of the family get together, extended included, you should never expect leftovers, probably hoard all you can on the first dish though :)

Between my SIL Marcie and I divvying up all the food, it wasn’t really that bad seeing as most the stuff required little preparation. Since I was in such a hurry cleaning, baking, cooking, beautifying…. the last thing I had time for was getting pictures of all the food, and taking the time to get good ones. Oh well, I got a picture of the turkey, that’s most important right….. you did know that this was my first time really cooking a Thanksgiving turkey, right? Yup, and it was Janae’s first time gutting and stuffing it too. lol and I HAD to document it with pictures! :)

I thought I would be nice enough to give her the experience of doing it….would make her future hubby super impressed that she can cook a delicious Thanksgiving turkey, don’t ya think?! :) And maybe I’m also grossed out by handling a raw naked turkey so I delegated the duty to her haha Look how much fun she’s having! :) For the record, she actually volunteered to give a shot at it, and might I say she did a fabulous job, the finished product looked and tasted wicked awesome! Cooked to perfection….thanks to the mighty turkey roaster my mom let me borrow. Love that thing, freed up the oven for the other stuff.

The picture of us is us crying over our beautiful turkey….mahah no, for reals it was from the UBER strong onion we put in our stuffing, so it was our stuffing that made us cry. :) It was pretty funny, never have I had less control over my emotions while cooking, whew. :)

Besides the Beaut’ of a turkey, I hurry and snapped some pix of these before we gobbled them up. Cran-orange cream cheese ball with cinnamon crackers & Bacon wrapped green beans.

In case you want to know, if not just for memory sake, here was our menu:

*Turkey

*Mashed Taters

*Stuffing

*Gravy- first time making it from scratch from turkey drippings, it was good!

Creamed Corn

*Green beans- These were super delicious! Fresh green beans wrapped with bacon and drizzled with a buttery garlic sauce. mmmmmm

*Pumpkin Pies (one Costco bought and the other Dairy free-which I made from scratch and am pretty DARN proud of it! I actually would rank it high above the Costco one. I could barely even tell it had no milk in it! Tim was extremely impressed and delighted to sink his teeth into a pie right along with us. He gobbled a little too fast, I didn’t get a picture of the thing, and it was my best work yet of the meal. sigh Just look at the picture on the site :) I used their easy peasy crust recipe too.

*Whipped cream- why use store bought when you can have super soft, fluffy and much better fresh whipped cream! I also made some Coconut whipped cream for hubby to go with his dairy free pumpkin pie!

*Olives

*Pickles

*Cheese balls

Marcie made the rest:

*Rolls

*Cranberry sauce

*2 pies (she made this mean cranberry pie, sooo good!)

*Yams

*Veggies + dip

*Fruit (she put it in paper cups and decorated them as turkeys, was cute!)

*Jello Salads

*Beverage (They brought the most delicious sparkling ciders I’ve ever had, my favorite was the apple blueberry and blood orange… yuuuum!)

That’s pretty much our traditional Thanksgiving meal, it’s probably about the same as most others, maybe…

We busted out some games to play and stuffed ourselves to the brim til we truly could eat no more. It was great. :) Though I don’t think it was smart on my part cuz it did make me vomit later and major heartburn, but was it worth it? Heck ya! :)

It was so fun to be with family and just relax and eat good food, I love Thanksgiving! I missed the rest of my family, but am glad they were able to be with loved ones as well…..except for my poor neglected brother Paul. I almost cried thinking how lonely he must be by himself clear over in Baton Rouge, spending his day at a Pizza buffet and movie theaters. How sad is that?!? At least we’ll all be together for Christmas. :)

I hope everyone had a relaxing Thanksgiving and were surrounded by loved ones. So grateful for a day dedicated to helping us focus on our blessings and what we do have rather than what we do not have. I’m extremely blessed beyond measure.