Thanksgiving came and went in a blur and already Black Friday is flying by.  Why does the time seem seemed to be sucked through a vacuum when there is fun to be had, or big meals to be readied?  It’s hard to believe that the chapter of November is almost through and that we are moving onto the holiday of Christmas.

As it always seems to be, John had to work on Thanksgiving.  That means he is gone for 24 hours.  So, since my parents are in town, I decided to host the Thanksgiving meal at our house.  Catherine is still on a fairly strict nap schedule, so I wanted her to easily be able to go down if our guests were still here.  We had our best friends Elisa and Scott and Lisa and Ken over to share in the festivities.

I am not a huge fan of cooking (I always seem to mess something up and I hate the clean up) but I wanted to make the turkey this year.  Usually I make Martha Stewart’s perfect roast turkey but as I was flipping through her online recipes I found a spice-cured turkey that I just had to try.  Now, I have never brined a turkey and I didn’t have a pot big enough to soak it in overnight so we had to improvise.  John ended up buying Glad space saver sized bags and I soaked the turkey overnight inside the bag and put it in a cooler out in the backyard.  I called it the redneck way of cooking a turkey.  I’m not sure Martha would have been proud.

On Thanksgiving day, my dad turned into a cookie artist and put together these cute little turkeys made out of oreos, candy corn, malt balls, reeses, and frosting.  It took him a couple of hours and he swore he would never make them again but they were the hit of the party.

The turkey turned out pretty good, I was impressed but I still like the old recipe better.  The drippings didn’t make for a good gravy.  It was way too sweet and the hint of apple cider just took it over the edge (I thought it would be good with that).  We had a lot of food, many of the dishes were new recipes.  And we had some phenomenal desserts.  As usually we stuffed ourselves silly.

After some WII games and a pedicure for Catherine, we headed over to see John at the fire station.  They were enjoying the laziness of the day.  Most of the firefighters were asleep or watching TV in the dorm room.  It was the perfect ending to a perfect day.

All in all, it was a wonderful day spent with friends and family.