I worried a lot about what to do for Thanksgiving. I thought about inviting somebody over, but I felt shy about it. But I also didn't want to have Thanksgiving alone because a lot of the fun for Thanksgiving is being with people you care about.
One day I decided to pray about it and asked that we would be able to have Thanksgiving with someone. The very next Sunday I saw the missionary calendar (which was interesting because we weren't usually getting the calendar in Primary) and the sisters didn't have anyone signed up for Thanksgiving yet. I felt like this was the answer to my prayer, so I signed up.
The Sunday before Thanksgiving I noticed that two other people had also signed up to feed them on Thanksgiving, which left me really confused, but the sisters had already confirmed they were coming. So after debating for a while I finally decided that if they were going to have three Thanksgiving dinners that was their problem, and I just planned on them coming and didn't say anything. I'm still not sure why they had three people signed up to feed them that day.
Since we had always had Thanksgiving at other people's houses, I had never made a whole turkey before. I was planning to buy one of those bone-in turkey breasts because I've done those before with good results, but when I went grocery shopping I could only find whole turkeys, so I bought a small one and got on Facebook to ask for tried and true recipes. I ended up doing a dry brine the day before by rubbing salt, butter, and spices underneath the skin (next time I'm getting disposable gloves because after rubbing all that salt in my knuckles were raw). I used the spices from the Herb Roasted Chicken recipe in the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook.
On Thanksgiving I started the turkey cooking in the morning because the sisters were coming around 2:00 and the package said I would need 3 1/2-4 hours based on the weight. I checked it occasionally and it was doing fine. But it ended up being fully cooked a lot earlier than I expected, and we still had a couple of hours before the missionaries were coming, and I had a lot of cooking left to do, so that put me in a bit of a panic. But I covered the turkey in foil and asked the sisters to come in an hour, then started cooking like crazy. It all worked out. I did ask the sisters to make the stuffing when they got to our house (I just bought Stove Top stuffing because I knew homemade rolls and the turkey would already be a lot of work), and while they worked on that I took some time to fix my hair because I like to look nice for Thanksgiving dinner.
It was a yummy dinner. The turkey tasted great, and it was still warm for dinner. We also had homemade rolls, candied yams (which Ryan made), mashed potatoes, green bean casserole (which I didn't like as much as I remembered), and the stuffing. Ryan made a yummy drink with frozen crushed pineapple and Sprite. I was fully expecting the kids to just eat rolls, but they all actually tried and ate a good variety of foods. It was nice to get to know the sister missionaries. After we ate dinner they showed us a video about the Church's #LightTheWorld campaign for Christmas.
The sisters left soon after dinner. I think they must have been planning on pie at another house because they didn't seem interested in taking any with them. Kevin begged me to make my berry pie, but then once Thanksgiving came around he decided he didn't like pie and just wanted whipped cream. I also made two pumpkin pies, which made a great breakfast for the next couple of days.
I think next year if we have Thanksgiving alone I won't feel so bad about it. We had a nice time together at home.
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| The can opener unexpectedly broke in the middle of all the cooking too. I had to borrow Ryan's pocket knife and use the can opener thing on it to open the last couple of cans. |
Kevin and Ann Marie enjoying their whipped cream:
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