The turkey virgin diaries entry 3,1 - Thanksgiving Day.

I might have mislead you when I said 'sordid' but you're here now so you might as well read about my travails in the kitchen.

Its noon, time to begin Thanksgiving dinner making.  But before I launch into the details, I would like to point out that EVERYTHING was made from scratch (except where chicken broth was added)!

I made the butternut soup yesterday...
As you can see comparing these photos to the lack of those to follow, I was clearly a lot more relaxed and strategic about what I was doing.

I also made the cornbread on Wednesday, I figured it would need to be a little bit stale.  The making of cornbread from scratch was set in motion by the fact that I couldn't find already made stuffing.

Wednesday's prep done, in hindsight I should have prepared a lot more the day before, I was in the kitchen at  Noon getting what I thought would be a late lunch but became dinner ready.

Dijon mustard green beans - easy no brainer and really good, it took about 15 minutes.
Then I made sweet potato biscuits (kind of like a scone), this took over an hour including cooking time.
While the sweet potato biscuits were cooking I made parmesan croutons for the soup, and salad - my own concuction of spinach, cherry/grape tomatos, celery, oranges and Philadelphia cream cheese - its really a good salad.
Then it was stuffing and preparing the turkey and waiting for the oven to preheat, this took much longer than expected as I was waiting for the preheat light to turn off when it should really be turning on.  Yes I was kind of tired by this stage, while the turkey was cooking, I started on the apple pie, mixing the ingredients together and time having flown it was about 4h30pm by this stage, feeling like I had run a marathon, I looked to Justin and asked him if he wanted to do this.  I then took up residence on the couch and rested my eyes.

Despite my lack of mentioning Justin in the cooking process, which is not an accurate depiction because he was involved, he also had the important job of mixing the champagne cocktail and preparing the peach cocktail that takes 2 weeks to prepare - this done in classic Justine style where I don't read a recipe fully, its in line with the time I wanted to bake a cheese cake but if needed 24 hours to set, oops.  At least we have that to look forward to in 2 weeks.

Below is our Thanksgiving dinner; greenbeans, mash potoato, gravy, croutons, salad, cranberry jelly, turkey with stuffing and butternut soup.

This is the ridiculousness of our dinning situation, we're both sitting on our respective chairs, you're either really high up or really low down, there is no happy medium.