Our Thanksgiving at home

Thanksgiving decorations..




Bourbon's sign....




I love to cook, so cooking tha Thanksgiving meal is like the superbowl for me. I love the whole process, searching for just the right recipes, getting all the ingredients ready, prepping, cooking, the works. Since we were going to my Aunts house on Thanksgiving, I decided to make our own meal at home on Wed. I can't go without cooking the whole thing. :)

My menu:
Roasted rosemary turkey with herbed ricotta filling
mashed potatoes and gravy
roasted mushroom, pancetta & cornbread stuffing
squash casserole
corn pudding
burgandy mushrooms
sweet potatoes
whole cranberry sauce
rolls from Golden corral (I joke that most people make homemade rolls for special occasions and buy rolls for everyday, when I make homemade bread & rolls all the time just for dinner and get golden corral rolls for special occasions!)
Chocolate Bourbon pecan pie
Gourmet Pumpkin pie


I took the Pioneer Woman's recipe for turkey brine, and it smelled heavenly!! It smelled so darn good I just wanted to drink it....but I resisted the urge. :)




The turkey actually brined for the first 12 hours fully submerged in the stock pot in an ice chest, but then it was time to start the mushrooms and I needed the stock pot, so for the next 4 hours it just had to sit in the brine in a roasting pan, 2 hours on one side, 2 hours flipped onto the other side.

The turkey in the brine.



I had each kid pick out one item that they wanted to cook. The boys pretty much did the whole things by themselves with just supervision from me. They are getting to be quite the little cooks!

Bourbon made a chocolate bourbon pecan pie. Everything tastes better with a little Bourbon in it! :)




Starla making a pumpkin pie. She decided since Bourbons pie had his name in it, her pie was just going to be called Starla pie. :)




Starla's gourmet pumpkin pie (it has a cinnamon struesel topping on it)





I try out a new stuffing recipe every single year because I love the endless possibilities. One year I tried one made with hawaiian bread with sausage and apples....mmmmmm. This year I found 3 recipes that I really liked, so I decided to take what I liked about them and create my own recipe! I used half french bread cubes and half cornbread cubes, pancetta, roasted mushrooms, shredded parmesan cheese and of course celery (and one batch with onions, one without for Alan.:) )




I always make stuffed mushrooms but I found a new mushroom recipe in my Pioneer Woman (LOVE HER!) cookbook that I wanted to try. Burgandy mushrooms, which cook for 9 hours!!!

The mushrooms before cooking....yep that is 2 sticks of butter. My meal in all contained 11 1/2 sticks of butter!! Arteries beware....





the mushrooms after they cooked for 9 hours....



Oh my goodness, they were amazing!


mmmmmm...I made a bacon herbed ricotta cheese mixure and stuffed it under the skin of the turkey before I roasted it...




Roman made the mashed "Ro-taters" :)









Starla was mad that Roman got the turkey leg (the other one had fallen apart) and was having a fit, she refused to be photographed.... :)



Our guests! Somehow Alan & I managed to not get photographed..... (actually our friend Rex was there, who was also not photographed, but he took some pics of us, I will just have to steal some from him!)













Bourbon with his pie...





Our thankful tree. We have been doing this for about 4 years now I guess. The kids go out and find a good branch and we make a thankful tree. Everyone who comes over writes what they are thankful for on a leaf and ties it to the tree. I put the leaves in a scrapbook.





Bourbon is thankful for music....




my daddy is thankful for retirement... :)