Our first (mostly) successful Thanksgiving dinner!

Matt and I decided not to go home for Thanksgiving this year - it's too expensive, plus it's hard for Matt to get work off. So we made Thanksgiving dinner all by ourselves. We even bought and roasted a turkey! Everything turned out really well... there were a few mishaps, but for the most part, it tasted just like being home. Lexie helped cook, and we had both Lexie and Jason over for dinner. Here are some pictures and the tales to go with them:

Lexie came over the night before to make pies and some of the other things that could be done the night before. Here is a picture of the pie crust that I was very proud of. It turned out so good!


So this pie is going to be a lemon meringue pie. I'll paraphrase the conversation we had as we made the pie so you can see what happened (and I'm going to do it without putting names by what was said, because Lexie and I are equally at fault for the outcome of the pie):
-Ok, the recipe says we can add some yellow food coloring to make it more yellow.
-Ooh, food coloring! Let's make it a different color!
-Ok, add some red. That mixes well with yellow!

-Hey, red and blue make purple. Do you want to make it purple?
-Yeah, add some blue.
(Note, orange and blue do not make purple. At all.)

-Eww. This looks like snot.
-Darn. How can we fix it? More yellow?
(That was unsuccessful... it just looked even more like snot)
-I don't think we're going to be able to make it anything but green. Add some green food coloring so that at least it's an edible green.

-This recipe says stir until think. What's thick?
-Mom says it should coat the spoon.
-Well, it is, but it's really runny.
-Alright, well, let's add some more cornstarch.

-This doesn't look quite right.
-Hmm. Well... just pour it in the crust.

-Maybe the meringue will make it look better??

-Fluff it up a lot so at least it looks good from the outside.
-Do these count as "stiff peaks"?
-Hmm....

-Well, let's stick it in the oven and see what happens. At least it looks good from the outside.

-It looks great! No one will know!
-Until they cut into it....

-Wait a minute, it looks like the green melted out the bottom of the pie.
-Eww. It looks moldy.
-Well, it'll be really funny the first time Jason sees this "lemon" pie.
-I don't know if I can eat that.

This is the finished product. The pie crust was great, the meringue mediocre, and the filling pretty darn bad. The green was bad enough, but we also cooked it too long or added too much cornstarch (we haven't figured out which one), and it was more like Jello than it was like pudding... It was pretty bad. The pumpkin chocolate chip cheesecake next to it turned out fantastic, though. Luckily.



That was an adventure. I don't think we'll be trying the food coloring again any time soon. Here are pictures of Thanksgiving day:

We watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in the morning. This was Owen's first time seeing Santa Clause.

He wasn't super excited...


Matt stuffed and prepared the turkey while I told him what to do. I don't really like touching and sticking my hands inside half-frozen whole raw dead animals... so I directed, and he followed. We put sage butter between the skin and the meat of the turkey... yummy. And yes, those are chopsticks he used to season the turkey. Long story.


This was Owen's job during the preparation: look cute and stay happy.

Taking a break while I continued cooking. This was Owen's Thanksgiving dinner.

Taking the turkey out of the roasting pan. It looked so good!

Matt carving the turkey as the man of the house. He was pretty proud. And he did a very good job.

Lexie and me waiting for one more thing to come out of the oven and get added to the food table.

Eating Thanksgiving dinner!


Well, that's it for our first Thanksgiving dinner that we made by ourselves. After dinner, we watched "Night at the Museum" and then ate pie. We were all wiped out. I have cute pictures from earlier in the week and from Owen's first trip to Salt Lake City, but I'm too tired to post those right now. Maybe tomorrow. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone, and here's to a great Christmas season!

PS for Marissa - Matt and I talked about all the things we were thankful for. That had actually been our FHE earlier this week, so we just had a recap today. Thanks for the great idea. We miss you! Hope you had a great Thanksgiving!