Thanksgiving

After Winsleys Pediactric appointment I went to Fred Meyer to get all the things I forgot on my shopping trip on Monday.  I was breaking out in a cold sweat the entire time.  I wanted to throw in the towel right then and there.  Thankfully the second we got home Winnie went down for a nap so I could hurry and prep the turkey.  Oh my gosh.  Cleaning a turkey is no joke.  It took me a full hour of going back and forth from turkey, washing my hands, rewinding a youtube video, back to the turkey and all over again 80 times.  How could I have done it without youtube!  I don't know if my kitchen has fully recovered from the thousands of germs I'm sure I spread everywhere trying to clean that big guy.  

It felt sooo good to finally have him done and ready for the next day.  The rest of the day we just hung around cleaning and playing.  Right before Dayton got home I figured I should bake my pie so I didn't have to worry about it on Thanksgiving.  I knew my kitchen was going to be turned upside down and after a long day of cooking the last thing I would want to do was bake a pie but the first thing I would want to do is to eat a pie so making it the night before seemed like the perfect compromise! :)  I made THIS chocolate chip cookie pie last year and I don't think I'll go a Thanksgiving from now on without it!

The next morning I jumped out of bed to get started.  I threw some canned cinnamon rolls in the oven.  This is funny because I go on and on later in this paragraph how I don't like certain things from the can but yet I used canned cinnamon rolls.  Makes sense, right?  I was genuinely so excited and nervous.  I kept telling Dayton the night before and that morning how excited I was to do it all by myself.  I was, in NO WAY, confident in my abilities.  But, I took the responsibility of creating a new Thanksgiving experience for us very seriously.  Honestly, it probably would have been 10 years before I ever tried to cook a turkey in Arizona.  Washington, by default, is providing me (us) so many opportunities we just never would have had.  Back to the turkey! I started the Turkey around ten and while I waited I made my homemade cream of mushroom soup.  Now that I've had the homemade stuff I feel like it's my life's mission to not let another person use those Campbell cans again.  I don't have a specific recipe I used but there are aton.  I kind of just pieced together my own from different youtube videos and recipes.  Dayton hates mushrooms so I just made sure to chop my mushrooms up really fine.  Oh, and the green beans.  Pretty easy, I just blanched my green beans and threw them in with the sauce.  I set that dish aside, watched some football, roasted some garlic for the mashed potatoes and by that time the turkey was getting close to done.  I facetimed my Mom to get her opinion. Clearly, you know I'm a rookie turkey roaster because I thought a meat thermometer was overrated and didn't buy one.  I'm so mad at myself.  I really thought I could just eye ball it?? 

We were all getting pretty hungry and impatient by this point.  I definitely took it out a little too early and I think I wasted alot of good meat but I did pretty well considering everything.  Everything was coming together and we were all so ready to eat!!  We said what we were thankful for, prayed, and dug in.  I said an extra prayer that I didn't burn anything.