Thanksgiving!...

Today smelled like Thanksgiving in the Kiester household. It wasn't a full-blown deal, but I did the best I could considering we had a twelve-hour road trip on Thursday and I had work Saturday night and kind of threw things together.

See, around Thanksgiving last year we hadn't been invited anywhere yet and turkeys were such a good deal. So I bought one, thinking we could have a fun little dinner with the neighbors. Upon hearing that we weren't going anywhere, they invited us to their party, so Mr. Turkey has been in the freezer ever since.

Enter the vacation. I tried not to have too many leftovers before our vacation, because even though looking back I am positive we've eaten food more than six days old, I just wasn't sure what would last and what wouldn't. So I thought to myself, I'll let the turkey thaw during the week we're gone and cook it when we get back! That way we'll have plenty of food in the fridge! (It seemed like a really good idea at the time. Until I got back and was super tired, but it's not like I can just cook a turkey any old day of the week, seeing as how Gary usually works during traditional dinner hours.)

I was pretty nervous, because I've never cooked a turkey on my own. And we did end up having the neighbors over and of course dinner was ready maybe half an hour after they showed up... but the turkey was beautiful and the rolls were pretty good. The gravy didn't thicken properly but at least it was tasty, and the box-mix stuffing was pretty good (in my opinion, but I think I'm weird in my stuffing tastes). Mashed potatoes probably needed a little something extra; however, since we were rushed I didn't care and they were good enough for the moment. We'll see how those reheat. I also made a couple pies (I bought frozen pie dough tin things, so I figured I might as well fill them both), except we brought that down to the NBA finals game party. Pumpkin pie was good (in spite of its poor appearance) and the chocolate creme pie... well... Gary liked it, at least. Maybe I'd like it better with cool whip on top.

ANYWAY. It was really funny to have a mini Thanksgiving, and even though timing didn't work out the way I thought it would at the end, I did have the pies made in advance, I stared the roll dough last night and par-baked them this morning (is that the proper term for the equivalent of a brown-and-serve roll?) and put the turkey in before church and it was beautiful afterward, so I figure half of it went really well. I feel good about it. Apparently I feel terribly accomplished because I've written way too many paragraphs about it. The best part? My no-fuss turkey of deliciousness. I have never dealt with a turkey aside from eating it, so I looked at some recipes, looked at the suggestions on my oven bag box (I am a firm believer in oven bags, by the way. Amazing.), and just kind of went with it. I even ended up not putting stuffing in even though my mother insisted I should at least put some bread slices in if I didn't make stuffing, and I think it turned out great. Maybe it's because it was a relatively small bird.

Okay. I guess that's enough of that. We're pretty happy that the Mavs won tonight (Gary was bitter because the Heat beat out his beloved Bulls), but the game wasn't really that exciting. At least the people were fun. And we had a delicious dinner. ;-)