Thanksgiving 2010

We woke up Thanksgiving morning to MORE.SNOW. It kept snowing and snowing and snowing. It felt more like Christmas in freaking Alaska than Thanksgiving in Seattle. Carolyn was still on Kansas City time so got up bright and early for a Thanksgiving walk... in the snow. Shortly thereafter Justin and I were up and ready to cook for our crowd of people who were coming over later in the day. We had prepped a lot of things in advance but some things just couldn't be done in advance.

We also started the day off with mimosas first thing. Mmmmm! Popping the first cork here.

Above- the tables were set and Bailey was supervising them. And by supervising I mean facebooking. Duh.

Also first thing- I started in on making potatoes. We were having mashed sweet potatoes and mashed garlic red potatoes. Well. APPARENTLY the sink doesn't like potato skins down the drain. Uh huh. HELLO plumbing debacle! Luckily I have a VERY handy man who plunged and took apart the whole sink to unclog the mess. It took a while but he saved the day...which called for another bottle of champagne.

Around one or so, we'd been cooking for about 4 hours already and people had gathered and were just talking, eating cheeses and drinking wine. Perfect! Justin and I were tag teaming it in the kitchen and were having just as much fun.

For the turkey, we had a 26 pound bird. Which was HUGE. We had heard that if you cut it in half, it bakes SO much faster and is so much more moist. So that's exactly what we did. And that turkey? Cooked in about 3 hours (a full, un-cut bird would have taken probably 6 hours to cook)... not that I REALLY know what I'm talking about because that is definitely Justin's area but I was impressed by how quickly it cooked. And it was AMAZING. So moist and tender.

Testing the turkey (or one half of it) when it was almost finished.

Another project: bread. Justin made two HUGE loaves of bread, one a cardamon bread following a recipe and the other called "add whatever Justin feels like" to that same recipe. We had done this in advance, just had to bake them on Thanksgiving day.

And finished loaves. Justin tells me that they needed more flour but I did more than my fair share of damage. I thought they tasted awesome.

Finally around 4pm, we sat down to dinner. On the menu:

-Pumpkin squash soup to start (like the one here)

-Turkey

-Ham that my neighbor made

-Stuffing

-Mashed garlic potatoes

-Mashed sweet potatoes

-Mushroom/green bean casserole

-Spinach/cranberry/walnut/feta salad

-Cranberry glop (basically cranberries and marshmallows, a staple in Justin's family)

-Bread

-TONS of desserts...pies, cookies, everything

-So much good wine (given)

I swear there were other things too but I can't for the life of me remember right now. All I know is that by the time we sat down to eat I was so full from tasting everything as I was cooking that I could barely eat anything. Everything was fabulous and came off flawlessly, though, despite the one plumbing incident. It was great fun being with everyone and working with Justin to do it together.

A shot of Oliver and Justin's mom at dinner. And the mashed sweet potatoes which were, hands down, my favorite. I could have eaten that whole bowl. I have a current obsession with sweet potatoes, though, so it's not really that big of a surprise to those who have hung around me lately.

Two of my favorite guys eating dinner... Justin and Oliver and the big cranberry glop in between them. I'm pretty sure Justin would say he could eat a whole bowl of that. I, however, was not such a fan of the glop. I think it's an acquired taste.

And at the other end of the table, the neighbors' kids (Ryan and Lauren) were working on two HUGE turkey legs. It was hysterical.

Attempting to get a shot of the whole table.

And the other side... love the look on CJ's face here.

And us... the perfect team that made it all happen so smoothly on Thanksgiving day. We brought our friends and family together to eat awesome food, enjoy each other's company and to truly celebrate the meaning of thanksgiving- how richly blessed each and every one of us are.