Tuuuurrrrrkkkkeeeeyyyy!!!!!!!!

Sorry to Gra'ma and to Sara, and to my two other readers who may have been waiting to see pictures of my Thanksgiving dinner. My computer has been doing strange and funny things since Saturday morning. Also, to those of you who read here, I am currently kind-of "stuck" when it comes to email. If you send something to me at ladynutter@roadrunner.com (my normal email address), I may not respond for several days. I can access messages and read them, but Microsoft Outlook decided to stop working and freeze our computer every time we try to open it.

Anywho, I have been able to upload my Thanksgiving photos, and I will share a few of them here. Here we go!

It's scary-looking, isn't it? Mom was right, though. She said that it seems a lot scarier than it actually is.


I find humor in a picture like this (hence, I took it), but you may not. I'm looking down what my mom might refer to as "the Alice hole" for the stuff I need to pull out. This part I've done before. This wasn't the scariest part, and luckily my bird was completely thawed. I've tried to pull the neck out before when it wasn't thawed all the way. That's hard, and it hurts because it's so stinkin' cold! Here's all the good stuff:

Neck, heart, liver, and gizzards. I didn't take the time to chop them up and put them in the stuffing or gravy, but I did simmer them for an hour and a half with some herbs and spices, and used the broth from it to make the gravy. I thought it was pretty good for my first time making gravy in my life!

I am not a big stuffing fan. I've had one stuffing in my life that I remember really enjoying, and that was while I was on my mission. We had Thanksgiving dinner one year with two sisters from Colombia, and they stuff the bird with rice. I don't know what recipe they used (if any), what kind of rice or what herbs and spices, but it was so good. So I went in search of a rice stuffing recipe online. Most of what I found was with wild rice. I found one that sounded reasonably simple, yet still tasty. This was what was still left after I stuffed the turkey:

I thought it turned out absolutely disgusting, and Ben didn't like it either. My guests thought it was good, though, and they took home all the leftovers. I certainly won't be using that recipe ever again!

Stuffed, closed, brushed, salted, and peppered, ready to go in the oven...soon to be the greatest accomplishment of my culinary life to date:

I had planned to be able to eat around 3:30, and I knew it needed to be in the oven between 10:30 and 11:00 that morning. I put it in at 10:29 exactly. I was so pleased with myself. However, by 3:15, the pop-out timer I was depending on still hadn't popped out (I was hoping to pull the turkey out of the oven around 3:00). So we pulled it out and checked it for doneness...this was where Ben's kitchen help came in handy:

As you can see from the second picture, it wasn't quite done yet. Another 15 minutes did the trick, though. It didn't take long. Here are the "pride and joy" pictures:

I have never really enjoyed eating turkey, unless it's in a soup or a sandwich, or something like that. I usually only take very small portions at Thanksgiving and Christmas, preferring instead to stock up on yummy side dishes. As such, I hardly tasted my turkey, but I'm told it was very good, which made me happy. The little that I did eat wasn't too bad, as turkey goes. We did have plenty of side dishes, though. With two other couples over for dinner, we had plenty to go around. Here is our full spread:

Starting at the top left and going row by row, we had sweet potato casserole, Jell-o salad, rolls, stuffing, cranberry sauce, peas, corn, mashed potatoes (so good -- thanks Jason!), gravy, onion pie, turkey, and pumpkin bread.

Finally, the best part of my day was that I didn't have to clean up one single fork or dish:

Thanks, Ben! You were great that day, and every day. I love you!