Sunday, November 30

Our Second Thanksgiving

Today we celebrated a family Thanksgiving...and cooked our huge 26+ pound bird! The Turkey was excellent- even if it did take 6 hours to cook. It was a real workout pulling the turkey in and out of the oven- I recruited Mike's help when I flipped it over after the first hour.

The skin looks burnt, but it is just where the sugar in the sugar, mustard & bourbon marinade caramelized. We had all our favorites- mashed potatoes, rolls, peas and pearl onions in white sauce (my favorite!), cranberry sauce (which Matt grudgingly shared with the rest of us), and, of course, gravy and stuffing (Mike's only required dish). I did forget to cook the butternut squash- but we can cook that tomorrow and have with the leftovers. (At least I didn't forget it in the microwave or oven- I completely forgot to even start it!) Oh well, what's Thanksgiving without forgetting a dish??

Here Mike once again practices his carving skills...with an eager David awaiting the first taste of the turkey.

I did realize there were are lot of things I wish I would have brought with me...and a few things I thought I had but didn't. My turkey platter, my turkey cooking rack, more serving bowls...Cooking stuff is not easy to find here. Angie has promised to show me a local cooking store so I am looking forward to that! I had to borrow her springform pan for the pumpkin Cheesecake I made for Thursday's get together.

Today was and early day for the boy and I. We got up before 5 am to go down to the Exchange on Camp Foster. All weekend they were giving out $20 gift cards to the first 100 people in line. We went down on Black Friday- but at 4:30 am we were about 200th in line. We ended up staying even though we knew we wouldn't get any gift cards- they were having other give-a-ways too. We FROZE in line though! Felt like we were back in Anacortes! Very glad we had thought to take down a blanket- David and I huddled in that (Matt just went back to the van to warm up). Someone said it had dropped to 54 degrees- and there was a stiff wind blowing to cool it down even more. I know, 54 degrees does not sound cold- but for here it is freezing!

This morning was much better- it was much warmer and we were about 40th in line so all three of us received the $20 gift card when they opened at 8am. They were also giving out Scratcher Cards and Matt won a $25 gift card! He was very excited- David less so... David really couldn't complain though...he won 2 $5 gift cards on Friday. I just won a free haircut (about $7) and free french fries. Didn't do any shopping this morning- just went for the special give-aways. Friday morning we did finds some good deals...including a serving platter I could use for my Turkey. The big demand items were the 1 Terabyte external hard drive for $129 and the notebook computer for $349 (that was tempting even though we didn't need one!). Matt, of course, shopped for clothes...the Nike apparel was 40% off and he was looking for sweats (it is cool enough now we are all digging out our fleece and looking for warm stuff to wear).

One thing we all agreed on regarding Thanksgiving...it is all about the left overs!
Yummm! (and no cooking for several days- yea!!)