Thanksgiving

We invited my entire family and Daryl's entire family to join us for dinner. As it turned out, only my mother-in-law accepted our invitation. On Wed. afternoon the day before Thanksgiving, I called a friend in town to see if she would be in town for the weekend, as I wanted her daughter to babysit on Friday. As it turned out, her family was staying home due to an impending snow storm. They were planning to have dinner by themselves so I invited them to join us. They have 6 children, so it made for a lively household. Daryl had also invited several students over who would otherwise be alone, and one accepted his invitation, so there were 19 of us. We put 2 tables together and were able to seat everyone. J. and I. made placecards for everyone, which made the table look really nice. I cooked a fresh 20 lb. turkey, which I got in the oven around 8am. Daryl got up with me and we ate fresh bread from the bread machine that I'd put in the night before and watched the movie "Sideways" on the laptop while I got the turkey ready to go in the oven. It was nice to have some quiet time together before everyone else got up.

I made garlic mashed potatoes, gravy, salad and a sweet potato pie with a shortbread crust. My guests, who are vegetarians, brought salmon, pumpkin pies and stuffing. My MIL brought peach pie, berry cobbler, rolls and cranberry sauce. The salad had mixed greens, goat cheese, pinenuts, dried cherries, and grape tomatoes with a simple dressing of olive oil and balsalmic vinegar. It was really good! Unfortunately our grill ran out of gas, so we had to broil the salmon, but we did that while Daryl carved the turkey and I mashed the potatoes. Our guests washed a lot of the pots and pans before dinner! That was wonderful. We ate around 4pm. I bought " kid wine" (sparkling grape juice) for the kids, which they love. The food was scrumptious and a wonderful time was had by all. Our guests left around 6:30pm and we layed around and munched dessert the rest of the evening.