Thanksgiving 2012 Recap

As usual, we spent Thanksgiving this year at Ken's dad's house.  The guys get a chance to hunt together and the cousins get a chance to play.  The kids also got a chance to ride Papa's tractor...

 have a slumber party...

 and eat lots of turkey!

We went up Wednesday afternoon and stayed through Saturday afternoon.  Benjamin was fighting off a strange virus with an up and down fever and a bad nighttime cough, so he was a bit cranky; but otherwise the kids had fun together.

I made our Thanksgiving dinner and in my {not so humble} opinion, it turned out awesome!!

I rubbed the turkey down with some butter and spices and then I put three carrots, three celery stalks, a quartered onion and 2 cloves of garlic inside and roasted it breast-side down.  While the turkey was in the oven, I got the other stuff ready to go. I peeled and cut up the potatoes and put them in a pot full of water. My sister-in-law-Nikki chopped up carrots and celery for stuffing.I made the green bean casserole and stuck it in the refrigerator.  Nikki made some peach fluff (AKA peach fuzz). We had a big break while the turkey was cooking and everything else was ready, so we hung out and talked and Nikki got the table all ready.  I basted the turkey and pulled out a bunch of the drippings to let them settle, so it could rest a separate to get ready for gravy.  When the turkey was almost done, I turned it over to brown the breast.  When the turkey was done cooking, I took it out of the oven and put the lid on the roaster. Then we turned on all the burners and got everything else going: boiled potatoes, sauteed carrots and celery, put green bean casserole and oyster casserole in the oven and got the crescent rolls ready. I pulled the veggies out of the turkey cavity and put the two cloves of garlic into my cooked potatoes and mashed them up together. We mixed up the cranberry sauce and got everything in the correct dishes to be served. 

Everything turned out delicious and much less stressful since I feel like I am starting to know what I am doing.