Thanksgiving successes & messes

 Hello everyone! Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving, with plenty of pie!

Once again this year, my hubby and I enjoyed Thanksgiving together at home.  It's quite a marathon to put together an entire Thanksgiving meal, even when it's just for two.  This year, I made all the classics: cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, green bean casserole, marshmallow-topped sweet potatoes.  My husband is an expert at making gravy, so I let him take over that task.

Can't believe I ate this whole plate of food! On the plate: stuffing, cranberry-apple sauce, sweet potato casserole, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, dinner rolls and, of course, turkey.

Thought I'd share a few of my successes and messes from Thanksgiving meal prep.  I'm hoping I'll look back at a few of these later on for a good laugh:

Success:  We decided to roast the turkey the night before to save time the next day.
Mess:  I dropped the turkey on the floor!  No kidding!  I pulled the turkey out of the oven and set it on top of the stove to check the temp.  When I turned around to grab the food thermometer, I heard a loud clatter and saw the turkey and roast pan drop to the floor!  Thankfully, I cooked the turkey in a Reynolds bag.  So my husband just picked the turkey bag up, plopped it back in the roasting pan and put it back in the oven to finish cooking. Some of the liquid spilled onto the floor. But otherwise, the bag protected the turkey!  We're still laughing about this one today!

Success:  I finished preparing the entire Thanksgiving meal before noon!
Mess:  I ended up leaving the pumpkin pie in the oven a little too long, and the crust got way too brown -- almost black on the edges.

Success:  I woke up early to burn a few extra calories at a 7 a.m. Spin class.
Mess:  I didn't have time to take a shower until 1 p.m.!

So how was your Thanksgiving this year?  Did you cook the turkey yourself, or do you get together for a big family gathering?  Hopefully, your turkey stayed off the floor!

I'm thankful for all you blog readers out there.  You really inspire me to try new things and not be afraid to fail every once and a while.

Gobble! Gobble!

Happy Thanksgiving, my friends!  I hope you are enjoying the day with family and friends.  I'm winding down after a marathon in the kitchen, preparing a Thanksgiving meal for my hubby and me.  I can't imagine what it's like preparing a holiday dinner for a huge family.  I'm exhausted just from cooking for two.

To be honest, I'm not much of a cook.  But I live to bake.  So while the turkey was only so-so, I made a pretty good pumpkin pie.

And my husband's favorite, pecan pie.

Thought I'd share one of my new favorite Thanksgiving-time recipes: cranberry banana bread.  I can't resist the bags of cranberries on sale this time of year.  I decided to use them in a quick bread, and after a quick Internet search, I found this cranberry banana bread recipe on the Ocean Spray website.  There are so many excellent recipes from Ocean Spray.  There are a few more I'd like to try while cranberries are still in season.

I've been having fun baking with my grandma's old bread pans.  I think it's funny to see all the indentations on the bottom of the pan from her attempts to "pound" the stuck bread out from the bottom of the pan.

Now I'm off to take a nap, maybe go for a chilly bike ride and eat another piece of pie.  Enjoy your day!

Thanksgiving from scratch

My husband and I stayed home for Thanksgiving this year, so I took charge of cooking our holiday meal. I started two days in advance with the pie crusts. Then last night, I made the cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes and two pies.

I'm pretty proud of myself for making everything from scratch, especially when I saw all the convenience foods in the grocery store while I was doing my Thanksgiving shopping. It's amazing that nowadays you don't even have to peel a potato.

Since I knew I had a lot of peeling to do, I recently broke down and replaced the terrible vegetable peeler I received as a wedding gift and invested in an Oxo peeler from Amazon.com. So glad I made the purchase. I bet it took an hour off my cooking time.

I stuck to a traditional Thanksgiving menu this year.

On my plate:

• Turkey, of course.
• Mushroom stuffing
• Cranberry-apple sauce
• Pioneer Woman's Creamy Mashed Potatoes
• Fancy green bean casserole, recipe from Taste of Home magazine
• Maple sweet potatoes with marshmallows, recipe from Better Homes and Gardens

I also made my favorite dinner rolls. (Yes, from scratch. I've got the flour-dusted clothes to prove it.)

My husband snapped a few pictures of me at work last night, looking up recipes on my netbook. Our kitchen is still ceiling-less. But at least the leak is fixed. Got to love the 1960s-style custom-made cabinets. Classy, eh?

If you're wondering, that green-and-gold pattern under the kitchen counter is carpet. That's right. Floor-to-countertop carpet. We still have the 1960s carpet in the kitchen, because we're afraid of seeing what the 1900s tile looks like underneath.

I also made two pies for Thanksgiving: pecan and pumpkin. My husband loves pecan, and I crave pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving. I was so excited when I pulled the pecan pie out of the oven. It looked wonderful!

But I was horrified when we cut into the pie. It didn't set!!! That didn't stop us from eating it, however.

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving with your friends and family. I'm thankful to live in a country where I have a fridge full of food, a house of my own, a great job and a family that supports all my goofy endeavors -- including staying up past midnight to peel potatoes.