Notes and such

Thanksgiving went better then I expected. The food turned out great and the table looked good. We enjoyed our meal and had a good day. At the end I counted my blessings for the things that went well. I suppose that is all that anyone can really expect. Colin and Conner both helped with various things and of course Colin made at least one dish, green bean casserole. Austin "helped" by asking when the food would be done, lol. Austin is not one for the kitchen. I suppose I need to relax a bit and enjoy things and not worry so much about whether it compares to whomever I am comparing myself to at the moment. I am always looking to improve.

So I took time out to put the new recipe's we tried and liked. I really like the red garlic mashed potatoes and the savory stuffing. The pumpkin cake was so great and is also a wonderful addition. The turkey came out so beautiful, I wish I had gotten a picture when it came out of the oven. Everyone agreed it was too salty but it was gone in no time so it must not have been that bad. The brine recipe that I used called for 1 cup of water to 4 gallons of water. I found some turkey sized roasting bags at the grocery store so we put the turkey in it and added water till it was just about covered but we still had plenty of plastic left to tie off. Then we let it marinate for two days. I am going to change it to one day and 3/4 cup of salt in a roaster bag full of water. I hope this will be the wining recipe for christmas. I typed all this up into my "master chef" software. I love this software. I even got my sister to love it. It keeps all my recipe's. At the time I was thinking back to a time I remember seeing my grammy do this. Of course she did it with paper and pencil. She always put notes in her recipe's to get them just right. You know that little hint to make the recipe taste just so. We even talked about the amount of egg in her rum cake and how she has tried a few different ones to find one that worked. I've never really done this till now and I can see how invaluable this minor thing can be for adjusting my recipes for the better. Of course that doesn't work when you aren't sure where you went wrong. I am not sure where I went wrong with the pecan pie but no one wanted to eat it. The crust was great and the pecans were good we picked them ourselves from all those pecan trees in the yard. The filling was ok but it wasn't right it had this sort of odd taste not like I used bad ingredients but like mabey something got put in there that shouldn't. I have always had problems with this pie and I am on a mission to get the thing right. It's all in the practice right?

On Thanksgiving we went to Marsha's, her mom is my husbands great Aunt Dottie. That would make her....?It was a decent crowd with lot's of family showing up throughout the day. Even though I don't know half of them. There was so much food I felt silly for worrying about what I was bringing-green bean casserole, candied yams and pumpkin cake. The food over there was good too although they sure don't make yams like my grammy. Later the boys along with the teenagers and Marsha's grown boys played football. I got a few good snaps and will try to post them soon. The boys really had a good time and I was sooo glad. Here a few shots of our Thanksgiving.

This is the pumpkin cake. It's a new recipe and it was so delicious. Like pumpkin bread in a cake. nice and moist.

Pumpkin pie. Looks good. I am getting better at the crust aesthetics's

Green bean casserole and garlic red mashed potatoes. The potatoes were the creamiest I have ever had. Yummo. There are some crescents and the stuffing in the back

Grammy's candied yams, and savory stuffing in front. Mac and cheese in back.
Ham and Turkey. It's funny because at first I thought I did get a pic of the turkey. Upon closer inspection though I see that my hubs carved the turkey and placed it so, it looks like the whole thing.