A (mostly) drama-free Thanksgiving

Yesterday morning I got my butt up at 8am to get over to my SIL's house to start cooking the Thanksgiving feast. Got there by 8:45am and the night before I made a butter/herb mixture, a cue taken by watching Sandra Lee's Thanksgiving special (I did NOT follow her directions to a T though- just basically made an herb butter). The things I put in my herb/butter mixture were: poultry seasoning, oregano, minced garlic. So I cleaned out the turkey (luckily everything was in a bag for me! I can't stand touching the giblets. Gross!) and pat dried it, then massaged the herb butter mixture into its skin and put the thermometer in the thigh, stuck it in the roaster, covered it up and started cooking it at 325°F at 9:15am.

SIL and BIL were cleaning up a bit, then I helped with setting up the table and everything else. Mostly it was a calm morning, just chatting and getting things set up, but by about 12pm, things were getting busy as we started preparing the side dishes. My SIL bought an entire bag of BAKING potatoes (you know, the large kind?). I'm talking a 10-pound bag. Mind you, it was going to be a total of 6 adults and 4 children. Not many people. So she peeled them and I chopped them up and got them ready for boiling. By about 12:45pmish, the bird was done after checking the internal temperature. I put it off to the side and we just got the potatoes in the water. By that time, my BIL's uncle arrived, and my SIL's friend and her daughter came too. We were just waiting on my husband to show, who was not feeling good. The potatoes were still going, a full hour later (yeah, that's how many potatoes were in the pot). The potatoes finally finished at 2pm, around the time my husband showed up.

BIL carved the turkey and we got the sides all ready in their bowls. Unfortunately, because my husband was not feeling so hot, we did not have the camera on us and did not take the pictures. I will say that my turkey? Was a success. We were transferring it to the serving platter and the meat started falling off the bones! When I had my one (and only! I can't believe I had that much self-control!) plate, the first thing I tried was the turkey. White meat (I usually only eat the white meat), no matter how moist the turkey is, can never seem to stay moist enough for me. However, it was delicious. We had dessert about 4 hours later. SIL put the turkey on a plate for me to take home, but all I can think of is how many mashed potatoes she had left over. LOL. The entire pot she made? Well let's put it this way- she filled the serving bowl overheaped with mashed potatoes and STILL had half a pot of mashed potatoes left. LOL!!!

My poor husband is in need of 2 extractions (teeth) and was all on painkillers and antibiotics. He's feeling better today, but we have postponed putting up the tree until next weekend (we have a fake Christmas tree).

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!