Pre-Thanksgiving

On 23 November, Brian received a free 13-lb turkey from his landlord! We decided it would be fun to throw a "pre-Thanksgiving" for some of our fellow classmates. Early Sunday morning I started to prepare for the feast...with only one oven, timing is critical and I wanted to have as much stuff prepared as possible before Charlie (the turkey...yes, I named him) had to go into the oven. I started with the stuffing, which I made vegetarian.  I found a great recipe by Emily Harris and the only modification I made was to include mushrooms.  It's nearly impossible to go wrong in cooking when you add two sticks of butter! 

After I got the stuffing in the oven, I started on the mashed potatoes. I stuck to a recipe from the Pioneer Woman, and they turned out to be great....again, might have been the butter (and cream cheese).  Seriously, the recipe required that you put pats of butter all over the top of the potatoes before they went into the oven!

After those were ready to go into the oven, I just placed them to the side. They would get cooked right before the guests got here. Then I got started on the sweet potatoes.  I've never made these before, so Brian helped me out with the "how to" of it all. 

These also were put to the side for baking right before dinnertime. By this time, it was time to get Charlie ready for the oven. I figured it was important to give him a name to honor him, haha. This was all Brian though...I wasn't willing to play with the dead bird. 

 And this is about the time I forgot that I had a camera....silly me took the majority of the pictures while cooking!  Anyway, here's at least two pics that I did get when everything was ready.

Final spread of food!

Time to eat!