24/25 november 2010 - success!

hello everyone! i write to you now with a full stomach after a thanksgiving dinner for the books. our luck turned immediately this morning when we set out at the crack of dawn (9 am) to find a turkey. dunne's happened to have a 7 pounder that was NOT frozen (!) which meant a few more hours of sleep before cooking began.

mary handled the stuffing which we made out of a loaf of bread, onions, celery and chicken stock! it turned out quite well, which is saying a lot since stuffing is my favorite food. ever.

we then set our sights on mr. turkey. somehow, i ended up being the one to remove the gross stuff from the inside, rinse and stuff said turkey. it felt like i was holding a baby which became extremely disconcerting when i placed him in a pan and left him in the oven for 3.5 hours.

those legs still haunt me

aaaand he's cookin'

next up, came the wait. aline and patry (our french and spanish roommates) had a very hard time dealing with the whole "no eating until dinner" rule so we popped in miracle on 34th st as a distraction.

"i believe"

after 2 hours of sporadic basting (that's right, we basted. so impressive) we began work on the mashed potatoes and green bean casserole. ireland does not, in fact, sell french onion straws so we were forced to crush up these onion ring potato chip things... we were concerned but it turns out that they are delicious and have made our list of things we can never buy again if we want to continue fitting into our jeans (along with caramel digestives and bourbon creme cookies).

i made sara add a significant amount of butter to the mashed potatoes so that they could compete with those served by michigan bunny every christmas! after using a handy thermometer to check the temp, we removed the turkey and set to carving!

finally, sara made an amazing pie and we got to sit down to dinner with christmas tunes playing and our new fiber optic mini tree (so realistic) shimmering in the corner. the food turned out so well that the classic thanksgiving silence settled over the table as everyone attempted to taste and eat as much as possible. our roommates loved it and we topped off the night with the first love actually viewing of the year.

note: meat on upper right is from a drumstick... not raw.

now we have 24 hours to recover before holy cross' thanksgiving upstairs! and mary and i are also getting very excited for amsterdam!!

love you all and wish you an amazing thanksgiving! i'm so sad that i won't be there :( we'll have to make next year count! :) xoxo