Thanksgiving 2012

I know, I know...We're turning the corner to Christmas but I still wanted to get this post out there.

This Thanksgiving marked the first time I would host and cook the majority of a holiday meal myself. I received lots of help from my brother, Mom, and Tim, so I can't take all credit. I learned, though, that when you are the one taking the time to plan, prepare, cook, and create this spread of food, you find yourself without an appetite all day. When it came time to sit down and eat, I just wasn't too hungry. And me, who is always looking forward to desserts, skipped it. Even into the evening, I didn't eat any. That can't be said for the following day, though :)

 

Wednesday I took the day off work to start of my day preparing and cooking. Once I had everything in front of me, it turned out not to be as full of a day as I thought it would be. Plus, I knew Josh was coming so I intentionally put off a bunch of tasks. That backfired, though, when he didn't get down here as soon as I thought he would!

Since it was such a warm day I brought the dogs up to the deck to keep me company for the day. They mostly slept and lounged in the sunshine but I did get one shot where they were nice and alert.

 Tim and I planned on making a cheesecake Wednesday night. What I didn't plan on was Tim spending close to two hours in Hy-Vee and coming home with a trunkload of groceries! LOL- he said he went in for a couple cheesecake supplies and came out with spending over $200! He gets more and more into food and cooking everyday so the man can't be trusted in a grocery store anymore. You never know what he is going to come home with!

 

Once the turkey was placed snuggly onto the smoker and all the cheesecakes were finally baked, it was just after 1:30am when we hit the bed.

 

Before we knew it, we heard Grammy and Papa's wakeup call of the front doorbell at 7:21! Ohhh, gawdddd was all I said while not moving a muscle. I let Josh take one for the team unlock the front door. I pulled myself from bed a couple minutes later only to find my Dad in Kaydin's room waking her up at the crack of dawn. He was just too excited and had to get her outta bed. Problem was, she was too excited last night that her Uncle Joshie was here that she probably didn't go to bed until almost 10:30-11:00! That didn't matter, though, cuz once she saw my Mom and Dad's face, she jumped out of bed and was on her feet in .2 seconds!

 

Once we were all up and breakfast was in the oven, it was time to break out the Black Friday ads.

 

Another Thanksgiving tradition- watching the Macy's Parade! Ya know, for many years now, I realized I don't really even watch it that closely or pay much attention but it has to be on. Just has to! It's tradition! :)

As if cooking a full meal for eight people wasn't enough, I also planned a full breakfast complete with French toast casserole, sausage, egg, and cheese quiche, and strawberry cream cheese Butter Braid bread.

Breakfast Spread

Tim brought this home from his grocery trip. He thought his little Kaydin Baby needed an orange juice container of her own apparently :)

A little leg wrestling with Grandpa Arnold.

Kaydin even joined in the cooking, too! She helped get the baguettes laid out to be toasted.

Appetizers

Jalapeño Dip w/ toasted baguettes

Artichoke Dip w/ toasted baguettes

Vegetable tray with ranch dip and hummus

Cheese and cracker tray

Relish tray- pickles and olives

Main course and sides

Smoked Turkey

 

Smoked Pork Loin

Cheesy Crockpot Potatoes

Cream cheese and chive potatoes

Turkey Gravy

Green bean casserole

Cole slaw salad w/ cranberries and almonds

Escalloped Corn (2 ways)

Carolyn’s Cookie Salad

Cranberry Sauce

Whole wheat dinner rolls

Crescent rolls

Dessert

Pumpkin Pie w/ fresh vanilla bean whipped cream

Chocolate Chip Pie

Pumpkin Pie

Peanut Butter Cheesecake

Snickerdoodle Cookies

 

 

It was definitely an ambitious menu and I knew it was way too much, but I still wanted to go for it! Only a few things were left off. The mashed potatoes, for one, because we had a water main break! It started getting alarming when the kitchen sink started to only put out a slight dribble. A few minutes later, it stopped completely. Ok, I thought, well I guess we'll wait and see and when we need water, there's always the bathroom. I didn't really start to worry until Josh retreated to the hallway bathroom to clean his raw pork filled hands and the bathroom faucets were also dry as a bone! A phone call to the city confirmed that there was a water main break in our neighborhood. Luckily, the only thing requiring water were the boiling of the potatoes. Hence, the reason we scratched that idea. Also dropped from the final display of food was the cranberry and almond cole slaw. Since I (and maybe Tim) would have been the only one dishing it up, I decided to pass on mixing up the side salad. Otherwise, everything else on the above menu filled up our island.

Appetizer Spread

Turkey carving time! In our family, it's usually done with the hands. Not much knife slicing happens on our holidays. I remember back when I was really little, my family was usually close to the first to show up to my Grandpa and Grandma Lyon's house. This meant that Dad was roped into the turkey carving with Grandpa, just dig in and pull apart with your hands! (Although, the last two years I have requested at least some sliced breast pieces.)

Still working on building up a bigger collection of pictures with Dad. It would be much easier if he would just look and smile, though!

Entree and Sides Spread

I most definitely followed suit of my Grandma Lyon and prepared enough food to feed an army for a week! I guess it just runs in the family. :)

 Later that evening we had a fierce battle for the wishbone. It turned out no one won, though, because it wasn't dried out enough. We had to pick up that battle later the next morning and Kaydin turned out to be the successful one!

 

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving with their family! I also hope everyone is enjoying this holiday season. I'm not completely done with everything on my to-do list but I have a pretty good dent in it :)

 

Happy Holidays!