Surviving Thanksgiving

Major Holiday of the Season #1: Survived

I made Thanksgiving dinner for six of us, but cooked enough to feed 20. I kept telling myself, "everyone needs leftovers" - that combined with the $.17/lb turkey sale and the Italian gene to provide waaay too much food, drove me to cook up thirty-two pounds of turkey (a 13 pounder on Wed and a 19 pounder on Thurs).

I'm not normally a very organized person, but for this shindig, I opted to pull things together early, make lists, create timelines... in other words, I channeled my inner Jenny.

In case you've never pulled together a Thxgvg dinner, here's what I did before the big day...

Shop for stuff
Thaw turkeys
Make Pumpkin Cheesecake
Cook Mrs. Smiths Pumpkin Pie
CLEAN
Make artichoke Dip
Cook turkey #1 (which, btw, was the most delicious, moist, yummy turkey ever - not sure how/why)


And here's my actual list from the day of:


Fear not, the unchecked items went off without a hitch and though I got a little off schedule, we were all sitting down to eat at about 3:30pm. And, needless to say, everyone had PLENTY of leftovers!

Here are family pix from the day.