Today we hosted our first official Thanksgiving meal, complete with turkey and dressing! Lane and I both come from families that love to eat, and both of our moms are fantastic cooks. So, I was a little nervous about living up to Thanksgiving expectations. I really enjoyed the whole process. I made lists of what all needed to be done and when I was going to do them. Below is my first Thanksgiving "battle wound" where I burned my arm on a skillet Monday night when making cornbread for my dressing. It looks a lot worse than it really was. I put some Neosporin on it that night and it hasn't hurt since.
We had a couple of other families from church over (the Birds and the Deavers), who weren't able to be with their families either. I made the turkey, dressing, gravy, hashbrown casserole, corn casserole, rolls, an apple pie, a buttermilk pie, and a frozen peanut butter pie. The Deavers brought green bean casserole, deviled eggs, and a pumpkin pie. The Birds brought pasta salad and squash casserole. So, we had quite a spread!
The bird!
The spread!
More spread!With my "first Thanksgiving" behind me now, I look to the future with much more confidence! It's always scary when you attempt something BIG that you haven't done before. The turkey turned out great! (and was VERY easy!) The hardest part was finding the bag of giblets to pull out. Thank you to the Butterball people for putting both the giblets and the neck in bags for me to just pull out. If you know me, you know that sticking my hand down into a dead turkey carcass was gross enough...I couldn't imagine having to actually cut them out myself!
I used my mother-in-law's dressing recipe. She makes it in the crockpot, which I think is just brilliant because it frees your oven for other things!
Overall, everything tasted great! The kids all had a great time playing together. There were parades and football on TV. It really turned out to be a "normal" Thanksgiving! If we can't be with our actual family on such an important day, there's no one better to share the day with than our friends from our church family. That is one of the things that I am most thankful for! Of all the places Lane and I have lived and worked, we've never had many friends our own age to hang out with. We feel truly blessed to be part of such a fun and encouraging group!
I used my mother-in-law's dressing recipe. She makes it in the crockpot, which I think is just brilliant because it frees your oven for other things!
Overall, everything tasted great! The kids all had a great time playing together. There were parades and football on TV. It really turned out to be a "normal" Thanksgiving! If we can't be with our actual family on such an important day, there's no one better to share the day with than our friends from our church family. That is one of the things that I am most thankful for! Of all the places Lane and I have lived and worked, we've never had many friends our own age to hang out with. We feel truly blessed to be part of such a fun and encouraging group!
Happy Thanksgiving!!!!
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