Thanksgiving

This year there have been a lot of crazy things that have happened in our lives. But one of the biggest and most exciting has been the purchase of our first home. We LOVE it!

I decided I wanted to host Thanksgiving here to inaugurate the house with the biggest cooking day of the year. I invited pretty much everyone we could but in the end the only people that came were my parents. In hindsight it may have been better considering I have never cooked a Thanksgiving meal from start to finish. I got super overwhelmed a couple times but thanks to my mom I made it through.

My mom also made an AMAZING quilt/tablecloth that's reversible. I can celebrate Fall/Thanksgiving on one side and Christmas on the other. It's gorgeous and I love it.

 

I loved using our good dishes we got for our wedding along with the sleek silverware. At first I regretted my choice but seeing them with this tablecloth. Perfection!

I'm not going to lie. The food was REALLY good. All thanks to America's Test Kitchen and Martha Stewart. Without further adieu I give you, the goods.

We started with a butternut squash and apple soup and pumpkin maple salad while the turkey was finishing in the smoker.

 

I had made a ginger bread early in the day which served as another quasi appetizer. The recipe called for a half cup of minced ginger which was a little bit of a pain to get together, but it turned out delicious. The cranberry/pear sauce was unbelievable. I ate it on toast for breakfast the next day. I'll be making that again at Christmas, although I recommend cutting up the pears into smaller pieces than the recipe calls for.

 

 

Sir Luke got up at 2am to get it started. I prepped it the night before with an herb paste . The turkey looked super funny because it turned green with all the herbs but it was SO SO good.

 

 

That turkey was super heavy on top of the fact that Sir Luke was sickly. Thus the mildly unpleasant look on his face. Poor Lukey-Poo. That bird was G-O-O-D. My mom did the recipe was got for "Best Turkey Gravy" which I'm sure she would have had as a soup if we had let her. She loved it.

 

The garlic mashed potato recipe we used wasn't my favorite and we ended up nixing the green beans (the America's Test Kitchen links are locked now but I have the recipes if you want it) because we had so much food, poor Sir Luke. But I'll be making them for dinner this week!

We also made my sister's sweet potato recipe as well as this mushroom and farro dressing (we threw in some quinoa too. So, so tasty. I don't care for traditional stuffing. Mushy bread is not my thing.

So, is your mouth watering yet?

It was a fantastic day. We spent the evening at the movie theater in typical Nichol family fashion watching The Blind Side, which I thoroughly enjoyed. A great warm fuzzy movie.

I hope your Turkey Day was as grand as ours at Chez Stay!