The Feast

Elizabeth came down for the weekend and we had a full-on Thanksgiving feast (with tons of leftovers!). I dubbed it the Food Network Feast after I realized that half of the recipes that I made were from the Food Network.

I made my first turkey (I forgot to take a picture of it, but it looked nice). Daniel carved his first turkey. Elizabeth made a fantastic gravy and two awesomely-delicious pies.

Dane felt neglected all day because I was running around trying to get everything ready. Cricket got underfoot and scavenged for any dropped food.

Elizabeth's pies (pecan and apple) - YUMMY! Here's the table spread - there was more than this but we had to spread it out on the counter: Turkey, gravy, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green beans, rainbow jello, olives, homemade cranberry sauce and homemade cranberry relish, and sparkling holiday punch. The only thing missing were the rolls. But we stuffed ourselves silly without them, so I don't think they were missed that much.

My favorite part of the meal was the stuffing. I used Anne Burrell's cornbread stuffing recipe and the only alteration I made was to leave out the cranberries. A close second was the sweet potatoes - which was Daniel's favorite part. I used the same recipe as I made last year from the Neely's but instead of maple syrup I used apple cider syrup.

The rest of the weekend we just relaxed and had fun. Well, Daniel took a test on Friday - his 3rd CPA test. Elizabeth helped me with a crochet pattern, we played games, watched movies, and had a grand ole time. Dane was sad to see Elizabeth go, they had so much fun playing together.

It was quite the experience doing a whole Thanksgiving feast for the first time. I told Daniel that I won't ever do it again unless I have more than one oven and a bigger kitchen. He said, that's why people invite other people over and assign them to bring something.