Thanksgiving 2018

And just like that, Thanksgiving is over.  I saw a meme the other day that I actually saw a year ago… something about spending 10 hours cooking for it to be gone in 30 minutes and then spending 5 hours cleaning up or something. haha. But that’s kind of the fun in Thanksgiving!

It’s also funny how short weeks feel the longest sometimes. Thanksgiving is always the 3rd Thursday of November. And that week, every year feels so long! Probably because of the anticipation of what is to come that week. That’s what I’m going with anyway!

This year, we had plans to leave Tuesday after Abug got out of school to head to my aunt and uncle’s house in Oklahoma. I love when we get to go see them. I have a pretty small family as is, so when we don’t get to see each other on holidays it makes it feel so weird. Weird is the only word I can see to describe it. My family did get bigger when I married my husband, but still… unfortunately they don’t care for me very much so I’ve heard. I get blamed for things that are out of my control and that sucks. But my husband, he’s my rock. He loves me and that’s what matters!

Anyway, Tbug couldn’t come down with us because she had a dentist appointment on Wednesday. My parents weren’t able to come down until Wednesday night so they brought her with them. It was a big happy family!!

Earlier in the week, Tbug thought she’d play a joke on us. The joke was on her though… <see below>

  

The drive down

Ugh! So when Abug got out of school, we headed on south. We decided to just eat lunch in Tulsa at Café Olé. It’s a good Southwest Tex-Mex type restaurant. From there we went to Reesor’s, one of our favorite grocery stores. Gosh, can I tell you how much of a disappointment that was? So our family isn’t just totally keen on Turkey for some reason… We decided that yes, we were going to have Turkey since it’s Tradition, but we also decided to have Beef Tenderloin. Mmmmm Beef! Reasor’s usually is fairly priced store, etc, but their beef tenderloin was $5/pound more than Sam’s. There’s a Sam’s just around the corner so it was off to Sam’s we went. We spent a little more time in Sam’s than Reesor’s but not much which put us into Oklahoma City during evening Rush hour. Ugh! That sucked.

We were on the interstates that skirt you around Oklahoma City and it was backed up like crazy. At one point we were going 15-25mph… that’s it! The turnpikes in Oklahoma are 75mph. When you’re on the interstates around the cities (Tulsa and OKC) it can range anywhere from 60-75, it just depends. So figure the road signs said 70mph and we were running 15-25 mph for miles. MILES I’m telling you. It sucked.

I drove from home to Oklahoma City where we stopped for a bathroom break and some snacks. By that time, hubby decided to take over, so at least I was able to take pictures of the traffic :). We hit traffic on the I-35 around Oklahoma City, we hit it again in Norman all the way to the Chickasaw Exit, and a third time around Paul’s Valley. I was never so glad to be out of traffic. And then somehow, we were approaching the Arbuckle Mountains. I guess I lost track because BAM, we got out of traffic and it felt like we were in the mountains. It’s about 1 1/2 hours south of OKC where we were headed.

Food, Thanksgiving is all about the food!

Back around Halloween, I came up with a recipe off a blog for Pumpkin Cookies with a Cinnamon Cream Cheese Icing that hubby has been BEGGING me to make again. I finally decided I’d make them for Thanksgiving. That way we’d have something to snack on while we were cooking. Right? I have to say, other than the Pecan Pie Cheesecake, these were the best dessert of the whole entire weekend. Hubby can’t have nuts of any sorts so this was his dessert :).

I also saw a recipe for Pumpkin Croissants. Guys, don’t waste your time. Mine were horrible anyway! And I’m fairly certain I followed the directions in their entirety. Yuck!

AC wanted an Apple Pie. I had a cookbook with me that had my grandma’s Apple Pie in it in her handwriting so she decided to make that one. I never did try a bite, but I heard it wasn’t the same as grandmas. #fail. Sometimes though, you just can’t duplicate those grandma recipes, sadly!! But the pie itself looked AMAZING. AC did an excellent job.

AC’s friend Neela joined us for Thanksgiving and the day before. That night before she took to washing dishes while AC and I cooked.

Since we decided to do the Beef Tenderloin, we had steaks the night before. Then there was some of that beef leftover the next morning for steak and eggs for breakfast. YUM! Along with our steaks that night we had the best mashed sweet potatoes on earth! and Spaghetti squash with marinara sauce. Hubby grilled the steaks on AC’s Big Green Egg. AC started a fire in her outdoor fireplace. It was like mid-50s that night. I was okay outside in a long-sleeved shirt but without shoes, my feet were chilly. It was GORGEOUS!

The Calm before the STORM

Gosh, I love Sunrises and Sunsets in Oklahoma. I love them in Kansas too. I love how the land is “flat” and you can see for miles. Gorgeous!!! And of course this picture doesn’t do it justice, but I still had to capture it best I could.

Mom, dad, and Tbug got in late the night before. We let dad sleep in because he never gets too. The rest of us were up and at it eating steak and eggs for breakfast and cooking up a storm!

So I went to take Tbug’s photo a couple weeks ago and she wouldn’t allow me to because she had ice cream in her mouth that you couldn’t tell, but then she posed this way. I’m not sure I’ll ever understand teenagers, even though I was one at one time…

This was the year of pies. We had that Apple pie, then I found a recipe for a Crême Brülée Bourbon Pumpkin Pie followed by a Maple Bourbon Bacon Pecan Pie. Why be ordinary when you can be extraordinary, right?

 

There was also this beauty… It’s a Pecan Pie Cheesecake. Other than the Pumpkin Cookies, this was hands down the best dessert of the whole weekend! It was so hilarious all the recipes we came up with this year for Maple Syrup. We actually ran out. Google told me I could substitute molasses, corn syrup, and/or honey. I had to do that a couple times… It was a sad day.

The other food

So we had appetizers galore. In fact, I think we made more than we planned on. That’s how it always goes I think! We had AC’s famous Garlic toast. Guys, it’s the best! We also had her ham dip, hot artichoke dip, and I feel like I’m missing something here. Oh yeah, her stuffed mushrooms. They are stuffed with Artichokes too!

This was my grandma’s stuffing as AC remembers it. Turns out, I had taken a picture of Grandma’s stuffing recipe in her handwriting and it appeared on my TimeHop app and it was the right recipe. Go AC’s memory! As a kid, I wasn’t crazy about this stuffing, but I like it now!! AC put some in the bird and the rest was baked in these casserole dishes. The stuff out of the bird was better! IMO anyway.

While we cooked, hubby was hitting the Black Friday deals online knocking out some of our Christmas shopping. He’s good like that! But what on earth am I going to get him?!?!

Every year Tbug gets asked what she wants and every year she says nothing. Not so easy when you have so many people looking for ideas so hubby made her a wish list on Amazon and made her place items in it. Turns out she only put 8. NOT ENOUGH! So we’re still working on this.

The dishwasher was going non-stop as well as Neela with the sink. The whisk I needed was in the dishwasher and we took it out so hot I had to use a dish towel to hold on to it.

These are the best rolls… although they look like the poop emoji. Hey, trivia, did you know what the poop emoji started out as? If you guessed an Ice cream cone, you are correct.

These. I was ready to cry over these. These were supposed to be Pumpkin Croissants. They were not. They went in the trash. They were nasty. My grandma always said you couldn’t refer to food as nasty but in this instance, she’ll have to make an exception because YUCK!

Funny moments

So I finally learned how to make mashed potatoes. For these, we added sour cream and heavy cream. When AC went to plop the sour cream into the bowl, I got it all over my hand. We had a lot of funny moments like that… like when AC told Neela to put the hand towels in the dishwasher because we needed to get them washed and get more. She meant the washer. I blurted out that we needed to put something in the fridge, er freezer, gosh I mean the oven. Yeah, 3 totally different appliances!

Then there was the ever popular, I snuck a bowl into the sink for Neela to wash. Finally, I was like if you’d wash that bowl I could get finished (I was being funny). She was like what bowl. Laugh #1. Then she washed it and AC put it away accidentally. So I walked back in the room asking where it was and AC was like, She put it away. Neela was like I did not. Then we realized AC did it Laugh #2. That… that right there is what makes Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving. The fun time and moments shared with family.

One of the reasons I tend to not like turkey is it is DRY! This was the juiciest turkey ever. I also get made fun of because I don’t like the word moist and while we’re at it, creamy. Those are not my favorite words so we’ll call this juicy! That’s a good word but boy was it!

And of course our Beef tenderloin. Hubby did well. It got a little more charred than he cared for, but it was excellent!

After lunch

After lunch UB went to the barn to do chores. Hubby took the girls up so that they could ride the 4-wheeler around and look for deer. Abug had it in her head she was going deer hunting. Sadly, they didn’t stir any up. I wandered up to the barn and everyone was gone so I played with Allie, AC and UB’s new Great Pyraneese. She’s adorable and I love these dogs. I’ve had 3 in my life and they are so awesome!

Finally, UB drove me back to the house so that Allie would stay at the barn. Then my clan showed back up. From there we all sat around and watched Hallmark Christmas movies. Gosh, I love those… I know the plots are all basically the same. In fact, there’s a drinking game I saw go around Facebook about those, but gosh I love them!

Tbug was in the other room…

Our dinner that night was desserts, but Abug got hungry again so she made herself a small plate.

And while she tried to stay awake, she lost that battle and I guess Tbug made a great bed.

The next morning we headed out because AC had to go to work early and UB had to judge a horse show that evening. As we were pulling out, Allie ran down from the barn to see us off. UB was already gone (not sure if he was getting things done around the farm or if he was at the show) and AC was already at work. The drive home… hardly ANY traffic. Crazy, right? It was smooth sailing around OKC and Tulsa wasn’t bad either. In fact, later in the afternoon we went and did a little Black Friday shopping around Tulsa. We went to Williams Sonoma, Reesor’s, Sam’s, and Lowe’s. I think Lowe’s was the busiest place we went. Then we had lunch at Chuy’s there in Tulsa and dinner at SaltGrass before heading home. It was a fabulous Thanksgiving!!