KirstenL4W

So yesterday I cooked my very first Thanksgiving dinner.  In the days leading up to it, I was getting a bit nervous.  I’d never done such a big important dinner before, but I’d seen it done dozens of times.  It always looks so easy when I was over my mom’s or my grandparents homes for the holidays, so I was sure that there was going to be some big thing I was going to mess up.  I’d never even cooked a whole turkey before, not even a roaster chicken.  Then there’s just the sheer quantity of food, and trying to coordinate it on 4 burners in a small kitchen to all be done at the same time.  It can seem impossible when you start to think about everything that goes into it.

Before we even get started, I did get my Bell’s Seasoning.  My mom sent it express mail, so it was here on Tuesday except the postman didn’t leave me a note.   Wednesday when I got home from work I still didn’t have it, so I called my mom and she gave me a tracking number.  It said a delivery attempt was made and a notice left.  I never got a notice, not in my mailbox, front door, in my yard, anywhere.  I printed out the tracking info from the computer and went to the post office, where they did in fact have my package.  Hooray!  Now I can make my stuffing properly.

I woke up with much reluctance around 7:30am.  I really wanted to sleep in, but I knew I had too much to do.  I went downstairs, had my juice and sat down for a few minutes to finish waking up, found the parade on tv, and started.  First I baked cinammon rolls (from the can!) for breakfast, because it’s kind of a tradition - my mom does this quite often on holidays.  Then I made cheezy puff pastry sticks for appetizers.  Once that was done, I got to work making the stuffing.  As far as I’m concerned, there’s only one way to make stuffing, and it does not come from a package.  The night before, I had ripped up my bread and chopped my onion and celery.  I’m glad I did, because that is very time consuming stuff.  So in the morning, all I had to do was cook the onions, celery, and sausage, chop the apple, and mix it all together.  I got that all mixed up and got the bird out.  This is where I started having a few questions.

My sister told me to make sure I rinsed the bird well, and I knew to take the giblets out, especially since they were in a plastic bag inside the bird.  That would not have tasted very good if I forgot those!  I rinsed the bird, including the cavity, and plopped it in the pan.  My sister will rub plain old butter between the skin and meat to keep things moist and give it a bit of flavor, so I did that before I stuffed the bird.  At my sister’s suggestion, I put about 1/4 inch of chicken water broth that Mister has 3 large cans of in the bottom of the roasting pan, again for moisture and a bit of flavor.  Then I put it in the oven, which was set at 400°F from the cinammon rolls and puff pastry sticks that I had already baked.

An hour later, I took the bird out of the oven - it was a hair under 12lbs - and basted it.  It was then that I realized that the oven was still at 400 and I was supposed to cook it at 325.  I turned the oven down, finished basting, and put it back in.  It still looked fine at that point, so I took a watch and wait attitude.  I took a shower and came back downstairs to start cooking up the side dishes.  When I took the turkey out at hour 2 to baste it, it was looking kind of done, so I called Mister over.  He took the temperature and the bird was done, but when we tested the stuffing, it was a bit cool so I left the cover off the pan and put the turkey back in for another 20 minutes or so.  I continued cooking, and our friends arrived as the last mad dash was done to get food on the table - mashing potatoes, broiling those last few dishes, and of course making gravy - again with chicken water.

I have to admit that I was a bit nervous when we sat down to eat.  This was the big test.  Mister didn’t make any comments when he was carving the turkey, and it looked good, so that was sure to be good.  The stuffing, I knew, was delish because it was my mom’s recipe and it looked just like hers does.  Mister did have to make a comment about the spices in the stuffing seeming a little off.  I knew what he was getting at, because of my minor breakdown over not having Bell’s Seasoning, but he got away with a dirty look.  Amber’s comment on my last post, I think is the best commentary on how my dinner was.  Mister and I have been eating it, and Mister wants to make his favorite turkey leftover dish of turkey enchiladas.  That’s one of those California things, I think.  I was all set to make soup from the turkey carcas, but Mister reminded me that I don’t know how and will I really eat turkey soup?  No, and probably not.

For dessert, Mister made a pumpkin trifle, and Amber brought a chocolate tart and some pink champagne that she mixed with pomegranate juice.  It was all devine.  I’m glad we didn’t have a huge spread of desserts though.  I can control myself through the turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes, but I lose all control with dessert because I have to try it all.  We had 2 kinds of desserts, so I had 2 desserts.  If we had 10 different pies, I would have had to have 10 pieces of pie.  Dessert is where I stuff myself silly on Thanksgiving, so the amount we had was just right.

Also just right were the amount of people I was cooking for on my first Thanksgiving as hostess.  Mister and I are both away from our families here in Vegas, as were our friends that came over, but we enjoy their company no matter what day of the year it is, so it was a very nice day all around.  I hope all of you had as good a Thanksgiving as I did.

Other Posts Like Me:

• I Had My Turkey Day
• And Then It Was Thanksgiving
• I Survived
• Just a Few Notes
• Getting Ready for the Mayhem

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