Thanksgiving 2011

There's the spread! I worked all day on the dinner, cooking perhaps 90% of it. My mom made up the stuffing as well as the gravy, and had to make the whip cream for the dessert too. The only reason I didn't post this update sooner was because yesterday my mother dragged me around town for a few hours trying to find new beds for myself and my brothers. Then I spent a fairly obsessive amount of time clicking through Black Friday online deals and attempting to find a decently priced new smartphone.

Anyhow, the menu was as follows:

• Roast turkey - seasoned with salt, pepper, and drizzled with butter. About 22 lb that we got for $10 USD. SCORE!
• Stuffing - basic bread cubes with celery, onion, and sage, seasoned with turkey broth from the giblets. It was stuffed in the turkey as well as baked off on its own.
• Green Vegetable Casserole - Used this guy's recipe, with added asparagus and broccoli, using shiitake and white button mushrooms for the sauce.
• Steamed Broccoli - My brothers hate trying new things without a fallback.
• Sweet Potato Casserole - boiled sweet potatoes and carrots, with a little brown sugar and spices, and mixed in toasted cashews sunflower seeds. Topped it with a fluffy meringue!
• Roasted Butternut Squash -  After cooking, I tossed it with some Mrs. Dash Caribbean Citrus blend, honey, and Turbinado sugar before baking some more to create a delicious syrup.
• Mashed Potatoes and Gravy - Used dry milk and some of the boiled water to mix the potatoes. The gravy was PHENOMENAL (I thank the butter).
• Whole Berry sauce - FRESH CRANBERRIES FTW! Used orange zest, apple-cinnamon preserves, a little sugar, and nutmeg to flavor it.
• Canned Cranberry jelly - Because some people in my house are uncultured swine.
• Wheat Hawaiian sweet rolls - For some reason the dough didn't ferment properly, so these were like really tasty dense breads.
• Pumpkin Cheese Crostata - This guy's recipe again. I used regular cream cheese instead of mascarpone, because I'm cheap that's how I roll. It turned out really good, creamy but not too sweet.
• Apple Pie - a friend at my mom's work brought her it, so I baked it off anyway, but it wasn't even dug into xD

The day was marked with several instances of nearly setting the kitchen on fire, the dishwasher had to be run 5 times, and apparently I can give myself a pain-induced seizure by twisting my shoulder just right. I consider this a very successful year, all things considered. We could have ended up at a local Denny's, where apparently they RAN OUT OF TURKEY!