We had a busy Thanksgiving weekend here. My twin sisters came to visit from Calgary. One of them has only visited once, and it was four or five years ago. The other has never been out here. So it was really neat to see them. I really haven’t spent much time alone with them in a long time. When I moved away from home, they were only thirteen. They are twenty-one now. Even though intellectually I know that they’re older and more mature, they’re still my baby sisters. It was neat to see just how mature and, well, adult, they are. We had a ton of fun. Meredith called them Bob or Baba (Melissa) and Kaw-wee (Kayley). She can be a bit shy and quiet around people she doesn’t know well, but she adored them from about two minutes after they got here.
My sisters have a friend who was in town just for the weekend who is spending the semester in Bamfield. She brought someone with her from Bamfield, and one of their friends flew up from Calgary to visit her. Since they had no where to go for Thanksgiving dinner, we invited them over, along with a good friend of ours who moved out here with me eight years ago and has no family here. All in all, we had eight people for Thanksgiving. I’ve never really cooked for more than four or five. (I grew up in a family of six, but I made one mistake once while cooking for them and after that my mom decided I was a terrible cook and I never had to cook for the whole family again, besides helping out with stuff they were doing.)
I was a bit nervous, but did a lot of prep work Saturday and made what I could ahead of time. So Saturday I made stock, mushroom gravy, cranberry sauce, and cranberry relish. I also cut up what veggies I wasn’t worried about going brown overnight and prepped a few other dishes.
Sunday morning my sisters arrived, and they were a huge help in tidying, prepping, and cooking. Everything ended up working out really well and was timed almost perfectly. The turkey ended up being done early, but we just turned the oven down and continued basting it a lot and it was fine. I forgot about the buns while they were rising, so they rose a little too long but still tasted delicious. My two crockpots came in really handy.
In the end, we had buns, green salad, avocado and asparagus salad, garlic herb turkey, stuffing, ham, apple sauce, mushroom gravy, cranberry sauce, cranberry relish, broccoli and cauliflower in cheese sauce, scalloped potatoes, and yam and apple casserole. There weren’t as many left overs as I’d expected there might be. Most of the side dishes were gone that night or the next day for lunch. I actually had a lot of fun, and can definitely see myself doing something like that again in the future.
Unfortunately, though I got pictures of some of the prep and the centerpiece my sister put together out of stuff from my garden, I forgot to take pictures of us actually enjoying the food! Oh well, I did remember to get pictures of everyone afterwards.
For supper the next day, we mashed up the rest of the scalloped potatoes, made some glazed carrots, and used the rest of the stuffing, some turkey, cranberry sauce, and gravy to make a Thanksgiving shepherd’s pie. That was really delicious too and something we’ll keep in mind for next time too.
I’ll likely post some of these recipes in the next little while, as some were from a magazine borrowed from a friend, and others were found on the internet, and I want to be able to find them again later.
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Mmmm sounds like it was a delicious success! I love the sound of a garlic herb turkey. It’s so satisfying when you make a big meal like that and everyone loves it.