The Thanksgiving Experiment

 

Now that I've finally cleaned up from this weekend, and have eaten my weight in Thanksgiving leftovers, I can finally write about my misadventures.

 

As far back as first grade, I have probably been dreaming about my life as a wife and mother. Not just your ordinary Wedding day dreams, but very in depth day dreams about day to day life. I can remember sitting in class thinking to myself, I wonder what my future husband is doing at right this second. Who would have thought he was right across the parking lot, most definitely NOT dreaming about a 1st grader.

Some days I actually thought about a point in time when I would have to cook Thanksgiving dinner. Now, I've always thought of myself as an "ok cook".

When I got my first apartment I was working as a waitress and was learning a lot of "tricks of the trade". I would invite my family over for dinner, sometimes 10 people would show up. In retrospect they were probably just trying to not shatter all hopes and dreams I had as a human being while eating my kitchen experiments. In recent years I had put off this childhood day dream. I've come to realize I do NOT want this kind of pressure on me. Thanksgiving is kinda a big deal, and we all know how Danielle gets in these situations. So when out of nowhere I got this notion that I would cook this amazing dinner for my Family. I called up a few people, set the date, confirmed and hung up the phone.....What had I just done? Had I completely lost my mind? I have never cooked for this many people. I have never watched anyone preparing a Turkey. I don't even eat anything other than Turkey or Mashed Potatoes on Thanksgiving....This was a bad idea. I bit off more than I could chew. I talked myself off the ledge, climbed back up it, talked myself off it again, Shopped, Re-shopped, shopped some more, pinned 18 different desserts I wanted to make... This is ridiculous, it can't possibly be this hard.

I finally bought the Turkey 3 days before the event. It was a 21lb turkey. After reading about 30 different websites I apparently had missed the part about setting out the Turkey 3 days prior. I was already off to a bad start....

 

Friday night came in a hurry. I had the Turkey in the sink changing the water every half hour like the 30 different websites said to defrost it. But all I could think about was stuffing it. When I got a look inside the Turkey I made a reference to Bill about it being like a pumpkin, and scraping all the goo off the inside. I could tell he was holding back sarcasm, but in light of the situation he simply said, "No, it's nothing like a Pumpkin"

 

 

My "You have got to be kidding me, right?" face

And Bill saying, "It's not Gross!"

 

First challenge, Completed. The turkey was stuffed. Now the real debate came. Cook it 30 minutes for every pound, the Internet said 7 hours, the label said 4 1/2. I couldn't decided if it'd be better to eat at 9:00 at night or have the turkey done 5 hours early.

I silently thought to myself, "I deep down inside, must crave situations to prove my incompetence" but then again...Everyone has had a First Turkey Experience. Everyone has Burnt something...

My sweet Husband usually makes non-funny jokes about women in the kitchen. He does it jokingly, but without any question he helped me with everything on Saturday. He crushed Oreos for my cheesecake, sliced apples for the Apple Crumble, and together we peeled and cut about 10lbs of potatoes.

 

 

And this was the end result. I can't remember exactly how it went in my day dreams when I was younger, but this had to be close. Most of the people I love, all in the same room, just enjoying each other's company.

 

My Final thoughts for this Thanksgiving;

Life is Good

and...

I'll work on the uptight thing :)