Thanksgiving

We had a nice Thanksgiving week.  My dad came into town and it was fun to see him.  The kids had the whole week off school too so we had a pretty relaxing week...well, except for all the cooking but it actually wasn't too bad.  Here is one of the turkey cookies we made.  He didn't turn out as well as we were hoping, but it was still fun.  It looks like he lost a feather.

 

I tried to do a lot of cooking prep work the days leading up to Thanksgiving.  Here are the kids checking out my mise en place (chopped veggies in this case) ready for the stuffing.  They thought the sunglasses would protect their eyes from the chopped onion fumes.  It seemed to work. :)

My stuffing is a Frankenstein recipe (made from a bunch of other recipes) that I have evolved over the years.  It has cranberries, cornbread, apples and all the usual stuffing aromatics...including the onion and celery and some fresh herbs.  Mmmm, carbs!!

And here are some random pictures of my prep work.  I enjoy cooking and cooking for Thanksgiving is actually enjoyable for me.  Also I feel like I accomplish something when I cook, and some days as a stay at home mom, you can be hard pressed to feel like you've accomplished anything (you know, how that living room keeps getting messy again just after you clean it).  So cooking makes me feel like I did something.  Thanksgiving cooking...even more so.  Here are my peeled sweet potatoes...ready to cook.  So pretty.

 And cooking in butter and sugar...ready to become a sweet potato casserole.

 Snacks for people to nibble while I cook.  See, we're classy in this joint.  Cheese and crackers and all.

Rolls rising.  Usually Scott makes the rolls from scratch.  This year I just used some Rhodes rolls.  I have to manage my cooking expectations here.  They were good.

Brussels sprouts ready to roast.  I actually LOVE roasted Brussels sprouts.  I don't think I realized how much I loved them til this year.  They turned out good!  I love veggies though...not everyone does.  Like my kids for example.  ;)

The scene of the Infamous Pie Disaster of 2012.  I exploded the glass pie dish after blind baking the pie crust.  Glass shards flew everywhere.  It was a bad scene...and kind of disheartening.  This is after we cleaned up a lot of the glass.  Sadly, this is not the first time I've exploded a hot glass dish in my kitchen.  When will I learn!

Every year pie tries to beat me...but I won't back down.  I made a another pie crust (a press in the pan pie crust) to replace the one that was now full of glass shards.  Aluminum pie dish this time.  Harder to explode.  :)

 Pumpkin pie filling.  I sure have a lot of food pictures here.  Sorry.

 This is the pie crust that survived.  It later became a pumpkin pie.

Turkey.  Since living in Okinawa where we had a tiny oven, we've started cooking just a turkey breast for Thanksgiving instead of the whole bird.  You end up with all white meat.  Kinda nice.  So I did that this year too.  The turkey turned out awesome.  Juicy and good.  Hooray!  If you're looking for a good turkey recipe, I recommend this one.  It's pretty easy and gives consistently good results.  I think so anyway.

Sweet potato casserole ready for the oven  I had a very specific oven schedule for the big day.  Thanksgiving is the one day a year when I wish I had four ovens.  Somehow everything got cooked though. 

Pies!  The empty pie crust is about to get pumpkin pied, and the crumbly one is a Dutch apple pie of sorts.

 Rolls ready to go

 My dad cutting the turkey with help from Matthew and Anna.  Scott wasn't here to do the honors.  :(

Here's what the little boys were doing while the rest of us were in the kitchen.  John was asleep and Grant was playing with cars.  Guess they didn't want to carve the turkey.

 Oooh.  The table is starting to fill up with food.

 And people!

Our Thanksgiving spread included turkey, cranberry compote, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, sweet potato casserole, roasted Brussels sprouts, rolls and a nice green salad.

 I have a space in the middle of my plate for a nice mound of stuffing.

Did I mention the carbs?

Johnny eventually came and joined us for dinner.  He is getting so big.  He looks like he could go for some turkey.

 And Grant ate a little bit of our meal.

 After dinner Matthew was very eager to break the wish bone with someone.  He recruited Anna.

Anna wore her sunglasses for this too.  Matthew was very disappointed when Anna "won" the wishbone breaking.  It's all about who wins and loses with them lately.  :(  Anna got the bigger piece of it last year too.  She is starting to think she has a knack for wishbone breaking.

 

And the pie!  Honestly, my pies turned out really bad.  I wasn't happy with either of them.  So you win this year pies.  :(  The rest of the meal was very good though, so I didn't feel so bad.  And the pies still tasted pretty good...nothing a lot of ice cream can't fix, right? :)  Also no one died from ingesting a pie full of glass pieces, so I feel like I should get some points for that.  So, it was a great Thanksgiving, except that we were missing Scott.  We're already planning to have a Thanksgiving like feast sometime after he gets back in a few months.  So pies and I can have a rematch.

And against my better judgment, a few hours after finishing all that cooking, I was in Walmart with the rest of Colorado Springs trying to do some Black Friday shopping (or Grey Thursday).  This picture could also be titled, "Never Again" or "Worst Idea Ever" or "Some People are Crazy...and I'm One of Them" or "The First and Last Time I Go Black Friday Shopping"...you get the idea.  :)

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!!