Thanksgiving

For the past 5 years we've hosted Thanksgiving at our house. I love it! I really do! One of my favorite things to do is cook, so I really enjoy it. This year I did 2 things different than past years. First, I brined the turkey. What this involves is making a flavorful liquid that the turkey soaks in overnight. I used Alton Brown's recipe from Food Network. It was the best turkey I've ever had! It was moist and had lots of flavor.

Second, I decided to make homemade mashed potatoes. For this I used Tyler Florence's Velvety Mashed potatoes recipe. I tweeked it a little since I was serving more people than what the recipe called for so they ended up having about 2 sticks of butter and 4 cups of heavy cream. YUM!!!

Continuing a tradition we started last year, we made our "Thankful Tree." Everyone receives 5 leaves to write what they are thankful for. It's really neat to see the tree go from being bare to having tons of leaves on it. One thing we were all thankful for was God healing my nephew Zach. When he was 5 they discovered he had a brain tumor located at the base of his neck. They removed about 90% of it with surgery. For the last 3 years it has shrunk a little but not a lot. When he went in for his MRI this past Tueaday, it was gone! What a blessing!

Poor Alex had a stomach bug a couple of days before so he didn't get to eat very much. I felt so bad for him since he'd been talking for weeks about eating ham, sweet potatoes, pink stuff (a strawberry congealed salad Mike's mom makes), and rolls.

We ate, played Guitar Hero, slept, and ate some more. I need to go back on my diet now.