Thanksgiving day is the beginning of my favorite time and my least favorite time of the year.  Thanksgiving is the day that we get together with family members that we often see only on this day, talk about politics, sports, and any other topic we have a strong opinion about.  We eat until we can’t breathe, take cat naps on the couch and then eat some more. Many of us use today to mark the beginning of the Christmas holiday season and start decorating after the effects of over-eating wears off.  We use today to think about and be thankful for all of the blessing that have come our way over the last year.  Many dig their shopping combat boots out of their closets and start strategizing their plan of attack for all of the sales later that night and Black Friday.

Uncooked Thanksgiving Turkey

I believe my favorite part of Thanksgiving is the pre Thanksgiving preparation, searching out new recipes, preparing all of the delicious food, and then watching everyone enjoy the meal.

The Week Before Thanksgiving

We have several goodies that we prepare every year, so it was easy to head out to the stores without a list and pick up most of what we needed to make a great meal.  After loading up with more groceries than we would normally get in a month, Laura and I started think up new dishes we would like to try making this year. This required looking through the newly overstocked pantry shelves only to discover we are severely lacking of the necessary ingredients!!  Out we go again!!  And again!!

As we near the end of this week and the radios started playing Christmas music (seriously the Friday before Thanksgiving – more on this in a future post), I realized that we had not purchased the main course, the bird, the turkey!!  We had to head out to finalize some of the purchases on Sunday afternoon so I looked around for the turkey while Laura grabbed the items she needed.  We ended up filling the shopping cart to the brim again! (What are we going to do with all of this food!?!)

The Week Of Thanksgiving

Cheese Ball Mixture

I managed to rearrange the refrigerator enough to squeeze our turkey in hoping it would thaw out over the next few days.  Monday night after I got home from work, I couldn’t see or feel any difference in the turkey so I decided to leave it out all day on Tuesday.  This time the results were better! (Just a note to those who haven’t thawed your turkey, yet – YOU ARE TOO LATE!)

Tuesday night ,I put the turkey back in the refrigerator to finish thawing and we started preparing some of the items on our menu. (We also discovered Nick likes brown and serve rolls, before they get browned!)

One of our family favorites is the cheese ball, a mush up of cream cheese, green onions, small chunks of meat and pretty much anything else you feel like throwing in it.  Sometimes this mixture will then be rolled up in a ball covered in nuts, but in our house, we don’t bother.  It gets eaten so fast, it’s not even worth the trouble of taking it out of the bowl.

Pumpkin Pies

The Night Before

Tonight, I was getting ready to prepare the bird for cooking, when I realized that we got rid of our old roasting pan without replacing it.  This was a definite problem so Laura and I headed out to Target to get a new roasting pan.  Somehow the roasting pan tripled in cost by the time we checked out and it took four bags to carry it.  I’m not sure how that happened.

When we got home, Laura got to work on a family favorite, pumpkin pie.  It wasn’t long before she said she was out of ground cloves. Not willing to live without the pie, I headed out the door again!!  I arrived home after fighting the crowds at two of the closest stores with the ground cloves. Thanksgiving was saved!  We will have our pies!!

It is now eleven o’clock and I still need to clean the new roasting pan and prepare the turkey for cooking tomorrow morning.

Did I say this is my favorite time of year?