Thanksgiving

OK, Thanksgiving was over a week ago, but I am a bit slow on the posting lately. On Saturday, we had some people over to celebrate Thanksgiving. It was my second time cooking a turkey and like last time, it got done early. However, not believing that it could be done, I let it cook longer. It ended up a bit overcooked but it still tasted good.

To help John and me out, our friend N came over around noon. By this time, we had been up since 9:00 AM trying to get a bit of cleaning done and defrosting the turkey. This year, we had a cooler that the turkey fit in so we filled it with water and let it defrost. We changed the water every 30 minutes to try to keep it as sanitary as possible. While the turkey defrosted, we cleaned and did other meal prep. Shortly after N arrived, it was time to put the turkey in. However, the inside was still frozen! I ran lots of cold water on it until it thawed, rinsed it out, patted it dry and put it on the baking rack. It was then that I noticed an extra pack of "stuff" in the turkey. And this stuff was frozen in a plastic bag. That meant running the turkey under more cold water, rinsing it again, and drying it again before seasoning it. We eventually got it all thawed out, seasoned it and got it in the oven.

Around 4:00 PM, the other guests started showing up. We ate at 5:00. We had turkey, stuffing, gravy, cranberries, green bean casserole, corn, jelly (jello) with pineapple, bread, pumpkin pie, apple crisp (I didn't have enough pie pans), and pecan pie. We all ate until we were stuffed an couldn't eat anymore. Then people just drank more. The last people left about 1:30AM! All in all, it was a good meal, good fun, and good people. (but I forgot to take pictures)