Thanksgiving 2015

If there’s one thing that hubby and I have come to love to do, it’s preparing a Thanksgiving turkey. Obviously if we go somewhere, that’s great too, but when we get the opportunity, we jump on it.

This year was one of those years. So a couple weeks before Thanksgiving we made out our menu, planned out our plan of execution, made out the shopping list, and cleaned house. Cleaning house included rearranging some too… we invited 16 people to our humble little abode so we needed to make sure we had room to set up tables. Easy Peasy! Yup, Abug was helping daddy move the old desk out of the living room :).

We were able to get Tbug on Tuesday night. Tuesday afternoon Abug and I started working on one of the desserts, a recipe that my aunt makes when we go to her house. This cake is awesome! Chocolate, chocolate ganache, a praline topping, what more could you ask for? Oh yeah, there were like 6 other options for Thanksgiving…. (and ignore my fashion sense, remember, there’s a reason I’m not a fashion blogger!)

Wednesday evening we had to run to my parents house to get our bird, so while we were there, we went down the road to see my grandma since we wouldn’t be able to see her on Thanksgiving. We all joined in eating grandma’s rolls and Abug got some tators and gravy too (don’t tell my mom that says tators, she’ll yell at me :))

Then we were off to the house to start working on prep stuff and anything we could do the night before, like finishing desserts as well as making homemade rolls. Tbug worked on dinner for us. I worked on the rolls. They tasted good, but boy were they dense. I messed up grandma’s “recipe”. Hubby and Tbug worked on one cake, I finished up another. Mom saw on the Today show to do the lattice work for our Bacon Wrapped Turkey on parchment paper and place in the freezer 15 minutes before putting it on the turkey, so Wednesday night he did the lattice work and put it in the fridge over night so the next day all we had to do was place it in the freezer. Then it was off to bed, off to bed, off to bed.

Quick funny stories.

• I’ve been having allergic reactions to something. Wednesday night I had another one so I took a benedryll at 6:30pm. By 9:30pm I was ready to curl up in a ball on the middle of the kitchen floor and sleep it off. I was soooooooo tired.
• Tbug stabbed her self in the nose with the cap off a sharpie.
• I sent Tbug off on a wild goose chase to find my bottle of water only to realize I finished it off 10 minutes before.
• Abug was getting tired.
  Abug – Crying, ready for bed.
  Me – “I took Benedryll 3 hours ago, you haven’t had a nap. I’m struggling, you’re struggling. The struggle is real.”

Thursday brought on Thanksgiving. We started out our morning by eating waffles, then heading into hubby’s dad’s house to see his family for a bit and then back to the house to nap and finish fixing our meal for a dinner meal. All the cousins were in the same house at the same time, twice! I’m surprised the world didn’t collapse. ha! just kidding.

When we came home, I chopped up all the vegetables while hubby rinsed the turkey off and got him ready to go in the roaster. After I chopped up the vegetables for the turkey, I was in a chopping mood so I went ahead and chopped up the onions for our Andouille Pudding (our stuffing). I had hubby and Tbug crying and I just giggled. I want to be as good as Julia Child or Rachael Ray or some chef like that. Hubby jokes that one of these days he’ll come home and I’ll have our kitchen table pulled out and onions galore diced up because I want to get good at chopping onions and that’s what Julia Child did.

Tbug did the prep work on our Corn casserole and this year, she did the whole thing, except dicing up the green onions which I did because I LOVE to chop things. haha. The corn casserole was a thing of my grandma’s. It is a tradition and it has to get baked in the corn casserole bowl. It’s just not the same in any other bowl. I can’t explain it. This year we let Tbug in on the making of it.

Then we all took a nap before the real madness took over. I started out working on reading The Hippopotamus by Stephen Fry only to decide the back of my eyelids painted a more vivid story.

Then came the fun! By the way, we love to cook at my house.

When Jared and Karen got to the house, Jared started carving up the turkey. Tbug held the platter for him as well as giving him fits.

Would you believe this is the only picture I took of the finished food? Seriously! Hey when I made my plate to eat, I didn’t even get any turkey. I have no idea how that happened…….. We had homemade rolls, Andouille pudding, corn casserole, mac & cheese bites, brussel sprouts, garlic cheesy mashed potatoes, gravy, deviled eggs, copper pennies, the veggies out of the bird, corn that Memaw made, oh and the bacon wrapped turkey… but don’t ask me how it was… I only got one bite….

For dessert we had Chocolate Pie, Praline Chocolate Cake, Tennessee Whiskey Cake with whiskey whipped cream and whiskey butterscotch glaze, and a chocolate cannoli. There was also ice cream but no one took any of that.

And it wouldn’t be a holiday at my house if something didn’t happen. This year the garbage disposal decided to quit working. We learned that there is a breaker not only in the breaker box for it but also on the bottom of the disposal itself. After hubby and Jared rewired the switch and pulled the disposal off, they got it back up and running.

• After everyone left I went on the hunt for one of my recipes which I still haven’t found… I found the second I still haven’t found..
• We went on the hunt for the babies binkie. found in the bed…
• We went on the hunt for E’s binkie too. found in Tbug’s room….
• I found a frog in the house (oh boy!). YIKES!
• Marlie didn’t want to come in the house for a while, she finally came.
• I had to take more benedryll.
• I realized I didn’t eat but one bite of turkey and that was when I was making the gravy. Realized this as I was going to sleep.
• I cleaned off the kitchen table to wipe it down but forgot until Friday morning. Woops!

Now if I could just find that darn recipe!
Happy Thanksgiving!