Turkey Day!

Gobble, gobble, gobble! Haha, Sooo, we had our 3rd Thanksgiving yesterday, and it was great!  The first year, we had just gotten to DMAFB a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving, so we had ham, homemade macaroni & cheese, green bean casserole, rolls, and a chocolate pie.  Last year, my family came out for Thanksgiving! So, we had all the fixins: fried turkey, homemade mac & cheese, green bean casserole, rolls, pumpkin pie, and chocolate pie (my hubby has a thing for chocolate pies!).  This year, it was back to just the two of us (good song by the way! haha).  I was quite proud of myself that I made cornbread for the dressing for the first time ever! I used the cornbread to make cornbread dressing for the first time ever! We also baked a turkey...for the first time ever! And of course, we had the homemade mac & cheese, green bean casserole, rolls, pumpkin pie, and chocolate pie :-) It was deeelish!!

So, how does a proper Southern gal not have ever made cornbread, cornbread dressing, or turkey? I guess because my Momma always made it.  I didn't really have much trouble with it though because I've always watched her make her famous cornbread and make it into cornbread dressing. 

My first every cornbread!

The turkey....well, haha, I don't know that we were quite as prepared for that.  Ya see, in the South we all deep fry our turkeys.  However, since we just got a 9 pounder for us two, we didn't want to deal with it.  So, Wednesday night, Jonathan cleaned out the turkey (ick!)..really just pulled the bag out (or so we thought!).  I pumped the turkey up with Tony Chachere's turkey injector and sprinkled the top with regular Tony's and lemon pepper.  I put it in the baking bag, and thought all was good.  Well, I forgot to put flour in the bag to keep it from bursting, so poor Jon had to take the turkey out, then the flour got all gooey.  Thanksgiving morning, I put it in the oven.  All was going well as I went on about making the other items.....until 1230 when I pulled the turkey out at the 3hr. mark per instructions....and this is what it looked like!:



Can you say "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation"?! Bahahahaha!

I laughed and laughed and laughed at this! The first thing I thought was that scene in the movie where the turkey splits right open on the table, hahaa.....but, at least our turkey meat was still all there!  Jon carved it and lo and behold, we found another back of icky insides that we didn't see! Haha, oopps! Oh well, it was surprisingly very moist and tasted wonderfully :-) 

Jon carving the turkey!

Thanksgiving food!

Our attempt at a Thanksgiving family picutre :p

Had to show my pretty pumpkin table display :-)

Even Bella got some leftover meat for her Thanksgiving lunch! :p

Overall, even though our families weren't with us, it was a great Thanksgiving!! We had a ton of laughs and some great food yesterday.   There were so many of God's blessings to be thankful for this year!!