Alex and I hosted Thanksgiving for the first time this year. We had his parents and grandmother over for dinner, then Beck, Kevin, and Nora came over for dessert. I made the turkey, gravy, stuffing, mashed potatoes, butternut squash soup, a pecan pie, and homemade pumpkin ice cream. Alex’s mom brought creamed onions, green bean casserole, cranberry relish, and chocolate chip cookies. His grandmother brought a lemon meringue and a pumpkin pie. Needless to say, we had a lot of food!
I started cooking on Wednesday after work. I made the pumpkin ice cream first – a recipe from my “Ben and Jerry’s Cookbook”. I used my Kitchenaid mixer ice cream maker attachment and the ice cream was super easy to make and turned out delicious! It tasted like liquid pumpkin pie with whipped cream. I made my pecan pie next, which turned out deliciously, even if it didn’t set right. I had Alex help me as my sous-chef that night and he did a lot of the chopping of veggies for me to use in my stuffing and gravy the next day. I roasted my butternut squash and started the soup preparation then stuck the mixture in the crock pot and then fell into bed.
Thursday morning, I got up at 7:30 and took the turkey out of the fridge to rest and come up to room temperature. I reviewed all my recipes and then started to try and tidy up the apartment. I can’t tell you where the morning went. I missed all the parades. It took longer than I expected it to make the stuffing (even with prepping all the veggies the night before!). The turkey went into the oven around 11am – about an hour and a half after I wanted it to go in. D’oh! Alex’s parents and grandmother showed up around 1pm, just as I was finished getting dressed after a light-speed shower. Patty helped me peel potatoes while Grammy, Keene, and Alex watched the first Harry Potter movie in the living room. The turkey came out of the oven around 4:30pm.
The turkey looked picture perfect!! Martha Stewart did right by me. I used her “Perfect Roast Turkey” recipe as well as her Chestnut stuffing recipe and they turned out perfectly. We reheated the sides as the turkey rested and then Alex carved the turkey. The table was overflowing with food and our new china and crystal. It looked great!
We all enjoyed stuffing ourselves with Thanksgiving dinner. Afterwards, Patty led the charge in the kitchen to clean and put away. I was very thankful for her motivation because otherwise, Alex and I probably would still have dirty Thanksgiving dishes. 
Beck, Kevin, and Nora came for dessert and we indulged ourselves with 4 different pies, cookies, and ice cream. Nora is almost 4 months old now and can almost sit up on her own and is starting to grab things. She can grab her nuk from Kevin and almost put it in her mouth herself! Alex is more interested in Nora now that she is starting to interact more with people and he spent some time holding her and playing with her. VERY cute! 
Nora is almost starting to crawl now. She’s going to be trouble pretty soon! Probably just in time for Christmas.
We had a great Thanksgiving. It was very different from in the past, but even though we had to do a lot of cooking and cleaning, it was somehow less stressful. I guess that was because we weren’t trying to hit two different places for dinner and dessert and all that jazz. I really enjoyed cooking and Alex keeps telling me how proud he is of me and how great Thanksgiving was. Yeah!
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Sounds like you had an awesome dinner Ali, I am proud of you. I never made chestnut stuffing. You will have to show me how. Love ya Wham