Turkey Day Came A Little Early at the Dea's

For our final meal while my parents were here I decided to make a "mini" Thanksgiving dinner since we wouldn't get to be with them on the holiday this year. As we all know the traditional center piece to any Thanksgiving meal is the tasty TURKEY!!! The problem is that since they don't celebrate Thanksgiving in the UK, the only turkey you can get is at Christmas time. Otherwise you settle for the sliced turkey you put on sandwiches and those honkin' huge turkey legs that look like they belong to ostriches. You can actually get what they call a large chicken which really looks like a small turkey, but doesn't everything end up tasting like chicken anyway??? Tonight I made a regular chicken, my mother-in-laws crockpot stuffing, a lovely cranberry relish from a recipe I found in the BH & G magazine, Pillsbury crescent rolls, and my all time favorite - mashed potatoes and gravy.

I also made up a pumpkin pie with my newly made pumpkin. It was great practice and I realized I have some work to do before the real Thanksgiving gets here because it didn't quite look right. I know some of you think I'm Miss Betty Crocker but I cheated and bought some of the Roll-Out Short Crust Pastry instead of making homemade pie crust, but it works like magic!!!! The thing is that since I hadn't used it before I didn't know what to expect and when I cooked the crust a bit before putting the pumpkin stuff in it, the crust ended up sinking way down the sides and it ended up being a pretty thin pumpkin pie. Next time I'll have to figure out what to do to make sure it doesn't sink down...let me know if anyone has any suggestions. It tasted awesome though and with some fresh whipped cream it was sooooo goooood!!!

Thanksgiving is also about traditions and one tradition that Kevin and my dad seem to have adopted was putting bunny rabbit ears on each other in family pictures. It annoys the heck out of me, but I guess when they do it to themselves I can't complain too much.