Squee! Attack of domesticity!

[wordinista]

Okay, so after a lot of beating around the bush, and a lot of "Are you SURE it's okay???" It has been decided that George and I will NOT be having Thanksgiving dinner with his family OR my family.

WE'RE HAVING OUR OWN! :D

Now this may not seem like a very big deal, but in our ten years of being together, the holidays have ALWAYS proven stressful for us. We eventually managed to get Christmas worked out in a way everyone could agree with, which only left Thanksgiving. Honestly -- so many years we wound up gorging ourselves sick, having to pack away not one, but two dinners. Eventually my mother took pity on us, and started having Thanksgiving dinner on Friday rather than Thursday. This helped a LOT (and Mom was always cool with it because it meant she could watch football on Thursday), but this year my mom is expecting out of town compamy: my uncle, my cousin and his wife -- and their kids -- and possibly more. George's parents always invite the whole neighborhood over for dinner, so it's always bustling. Thanksgiving with my family was always quieter, more subdued.

But now -- now we have our own place, and we're looking forward to having our OWN Thanksgiving dinner.

The tentative menu:

10-12 lb turkey (the smallest size I could order)
Mom's bread stuffing (must get recipe for both turkey and stuffing)
garlic mashed potatoes (I cheat - ordered taters from same place as turkey)
sweet potatoes with pecans (see above)
asparagus (will do myself)
corn (same)
rolls (have not decided whether I will try to bake or not)
pumpkin/caramel cheesecake (ordered from same place as turkey and taters)

Since I have never in the whole of my life cooked a turkey, I figured it would be smart to make the rest of the dinner as idiot-proof as possible. Perhaps it's cheating to order taters. I'm remarkably okay with that.

I do need to figure out how to get us two chairs to go with the dining room table. We're chairless. Hmmm. Must rectify.

In other news, they're supposedly testing the fire systems in the apartment buildings today. It was supposed to commence at 9 am. Nothing's happened so far, so we'll see. I have the kitties in their carrier, since they freak out whenever people come by (never mind people who make those evil discs on the ceiling go "BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP"), so I figured I'd take them for a little ride when the fire inspection people came by.

In other OTHER news, the forum is acting up YET AGAIN. At least it's a different problem this time around. Seriously though -- if it's not one thing, it's another.

Comments

[tx-tsuki.livejournal.com]

MMM, turkey.

Cooking a turkey isn't hard. The oven does all the work.

Wes and I stopped going to our family's houses a couple of years ago. It caused a stink of outrageous proportions at first, but they got over it. Besides, my cornbread dressing is far superior to the crap they tried to serve me on Thanksgiving.

[w0rdinista.livejournal.com]

I feel like such a dork, getting so excited over it, but it's kind of nice knowing that we won't have to get dressed up and run over anywhere (well, we'll head out and visit with folks later).

George and I are both in love with my mom's stuffing recipe (his mother makes a meat stuffing that I have tried very hard to like), but I think it's mostly that... taking that step, you know? Where you actually say, "I am an adult, and as such, I will be spending this holiday HERE" and not having to follow it up with, "As long as that's okay, Mom..."

I'm actually pretty competent in the kitchen; I just get nervous when I'm doing something I haven't tried before. I've never carved a turkey either. I'm telling George we need to get ourselves a carving knife. He's insisting we don't.

THAT is gonna be interesting.

[tx-tsuki.livejournal.com]

The first year we did our own Thanksgiving, his family conveniently (purposefully) forgot and called wondering where we were and when we would show up. Which led to us reminding them well in advance now of our plans. My family is scattered and does their own thing with their respective families.

By carving knife, I am going to go out on a limb and assume you mean an electric knife. That is what Wes uses and he has no problems.

[w0rdinista.livejournal.com]

We haven't exactly told his family yet. I'm making him do that. His mother is prone to conniption fits.

Re the knife -- actually I was talking about a big, honkin knifey knife. But an electric knife sounds promising. I may have to look into that...

[slvrstarlight.livejournal.com]

Thanksgiving dinners are easy-- and I say this from experience-- as long as you keep the timers on and it looks editable then you're fine.

Like 3 years ago when my mom coerced me into doing the whole damn thing for the family by myself-- I was 17 at the time.

To this day I still get compliments that my dinner was better than my mom's. She's slightly bitter if you can imagine, but that's ok too.
^_^

[tatertott.livejournal.com]

I should be grateful that I'm a vegetarian now -- no turkey cooking dinner for me (although Chris begged if I could undo my veggie-ness for one day of meat-filled glee....i gave him a resounding "no"). So what's going on with the forum now? @_@

[w0rdinista.livejournal.com]

Oh, it was just being wonky, pulling up a "DEBUG CODE" screen every time you tried going into any one of the discussion threads. But it got fixed.

Y'know, there are so many other goodies at Thanksgiving, you probably won't even miss the turkey. I'm a sucker for sweet potatoes, myself. Oooh, and cranberry sauce. *drools*