Katrina & Sam's Thanksgiving Feast!

Ok so I had this bright idea that it would be fun to make a Thanksgiving Meal. I love this time of year and everything about the holidays. What makes them great is getting to spend time with friends and family. I wish we just did stuff like this more often!

Since Nick and I live in an apartment we have never been able to host Thanksgiving. I really enjoy cooking and want to get better at it so I wanted to try making a full Thanksgiving feast. I am not crazy enough to attempt this for the first time alone, so I invited Sam to help me out. We had so much fun planning our menu and guest list, and even more fun cooking. I do have to say, it became quite stressful at times. I have not felt so rushed in a long time!

I woke up early Thursday morning to clean and get a couple of last minute items for decoration. I started cooking around noon. I started with a Pumpkin Cheesecake. Right off the bat I learned a very valuable lesson- read the entire recipe ahead of time! I should have made the cheesecake the day before so it would have time to cool. Also, it was a recipe that required me to cook the cheesecake in a roasting pan half filled with water. Yikes! that did not work. I don't know if maybe I didn't get the spring form pan wrapped in foil tightly enough or what, but my cheesecake crust started to fill with water! Ok, plan B. I looked online to find a similar recipe with a different cooking method. I found one and cooked it according to those directions, however, my cheesecake was becoming over cooked on the outside and undercooked in the middle. Maybe it was my oven? Haha, probably just some kind of operator error! The flavor was excellent so I will definitely save the recipe and try again, I will just have to learn some tips on proper execution.

While the cheesecake was in the oven I started to prepare the turkey. That went pretty well other than it wasn't fully thawed. (Lesson # 2- Buy thaw the turkey for at least 3 days in the refrigerator.) There wasn't much I could do about it at that point so I just proceeded with the recipe.  The turkey actually turned out pretty good. I am bummed that I  forgot to take a picture of it before we carved it.

Once the turkey was in the oven Sam started on her sides while I got ready for the party. She made a slightly modified version of Ellen's dressing (which is delicious by the way) and macaroni and cheese. The macaroni and cheese is a special dish because Sam and I combined a couple of recipes and added a couple of our own ideas to make the final product. We named it "Skat's Crazy Cheese"! The were both excellent! At this point in the day, it was clear Sam was having a little better luck in the kitchen than I was. Stay tuned...it gets worse!

We started to rush around frantically trying to get ourselves and the food all ready in time. Next comes lesson #3. Don't leave the blue, plastic pyrex lid on the casserole dish when you put it in the oven. Luckily I caught it in time so it didn't ruin Sam's dressing, however, there was blue plastic at the bottom of the oven so we could not bake the Orange-Chocolate bread pudding we had planned. Basically...no dessert after dinner!

Somehow everything came together enough and everyone had a good time. It was nice to get dressed up a little and have some friends over. I contemplated having everyone go around the room and say what they were thankful for, but Sam wasn't going for that! We had a lot of fun. Can't wait to do it all again next year!