Hosting T-day

My beautiful turkey.  My sister, the photographer, took this picture.
100x better than my usualy cell phone pics.

This year I was privileged to host Thanksgiving for the first time.  We had plans to spend Thanksgiving day with my family on Thursday and Matt had the idea of hosting.  I wasn't sure if I was up for it but I quickly warmed up to the idea.  After asking my family (Dad and Mom, Laura and Brett, Grandma and Grandpa) they all said they'd love it if I hosted and it was a plan.  So, I set out on the adventure of planning and cooking a Thanksgiving meal for 10 and had a blast!

The menu consisted of...

The spread. I didn't have a clean serving spoon left in the kitchen. 

• TURKEY-I used some recipe my sister had suggested and it was delicious.  Lot of butter, apple cider, and sage.  It was from a magazine so sorry I don't have a link to share.
• Gravy - Yummy gravy made from more apple cider and all the drippings.  
• Mashed potatoes - Found a great crock pot recipe here.  I left out the cream cheese but it probably would have been good.
• Stuffing - Another great crock pot recipe found here.
• Carrot Salad with Cilantro and Pepitas - I wanted something cold and when I came across this recipe I decided to give it a try and I wasn't disappointed.
• Green beans - Boring but delicious just steamed with garlic and butter.
• Berry salad - just mixed strawberries, blueberries and raspberries and added a little honey and lemon juice.  I made it the night before so we definitely dug into this in the morning and put it on waffles:)
• Savory sweet potatoes - My mom brought these and they were not your normal mashed and sweet but big savory chunks.  
• Cranberry sauce - No recipe here just the traditional way our family does it; from a can!
• Pumpkin Pie - Made by my Grandma
• Cheesecake - Made by Brett
• Pumpkin cookies - I made these the day before and we basically ate them non stop for 24 hours.
• For appetizers I also served a 7 layer Mexican dip and tortilla chips, cheese and crackers, pickles and venison sausage.

Needless to say we had more than enough food.  I have tried to be creative with my leftovers so that I wouldn't spend this whole week in a tryptophan coma.  Monday we had shepherd's pie made from ground beef, leftover gravy, leftover green beans and leftover mashed potatoes.  I also froze a couple of bags of turkey to go with broth and noodles.  Today I made a quadruple batch of turkey pot pie filling to freeze and enjoy at later dates.  I've also been enjoying turkey salad for lunch and the kids are loving the sweet potatoes and cranberry sauce.  The only leftover I'm struggling with is the stuffing.  Even though I love it on T-day I just can't reheat it and eat it.  I might end up wasting that one.

I'll close with a couple more pics...

The table setting.  I bought a cute fall table cloth, some brown
 placemats and brown napkins. Then I used wine bottles as the
 center piece.  I tried to keep it festive, practical and reusable but
easy to store.  And the napkins and placemats can be
used at all times of year.

One last silly picture of me "basting" the turkey.