Day3 Part 2 - 2013 #Thanksgiving preparations: my favorite three days of the year! #motherhood #cooking #mealplanning

Have you been following along with me in my Thanksgiving preparations?
If not, I'll catch you up.

I'm writing a three day series on meal planning and preparing for Thanksgiving, which started Tuesday.

You can read Day 1 by clicking HERE, Day 2 by clicking HERE, and part 1 of Day 3 by clicking HERE, and then, come back to this post.

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Of my final Thanksgiving preparations, setting the table came next. Emily helped me get out our place mats, cloth napkins, glassware, and silver flatware, all of which I purchased when we hosted our very first Thanksgiving as a family for friends in 2008. We also set out the cranberry sauce, room temperature butter, and our salt & pepper shakers.


Then, at 4:30pm, when our turkey reached an internal temperature of 150 degrees, I preheated my oven to 400 degrees and began baking and roasting all our side dishes. It takes about an hour for the turkey to reach 165 from 150, which we've learned from year's past.

First up was the cornbread dressing, which took an hour. Halfway through, I put in the macaroni 'n cheese, as it needed thirty minutes. On the stove top, I made the gravy and warmed up the butter mixture for the mashed potatoes.


Ten minutes into cooking the macaroni 'n cheese, I put the Brussels sprouts in the oven, on the top rack to cook the remaining 20 minutes.

Once those three dishes were baked, I checked with David to assess the doneness of the turkey, and it was at 163 degrees ready to come off the pit to rest for about thirty minutes so, I turned the oven up to 450 degrees and baked the biscuits for twelve minutes. During this time, I mashed the potatoes and mixed in the butter mixture.


Then, it was time to carve the turkey!


I made sure to sharpen our knives earlier - something I need to add to next year's list - and got to work on the bird.


David opened the wine and champange, filled our glasses, and set out the pies and dessert plates. Dessert should always be waiting on us!




Pour Nolan had a fever for the second day in a row and refused to eat anything so, we gave him a bath and put him to bed before we sat down to eat. I cleared his table setting to make room for all the food. It wasn't the same without him but he was just beat.

This is the year that really marked Emily's excitement over Thanksgiving. She very specifically wanted a place setting just like ours, none of this "kid table" business.


She was very interested in all the food and asked a lot of questions about which ingredients were in each item. She even wanted to make her own plate and was happy to put everything on it, except Brussels Sprouts. :) She ate it all and even had a second biscuit. She washed it all down with sparkling apple cider in a champange flute. Her only criticism was how tart the cranberry sauce was. 

At the end of the meal, as I served the pies, she instigated a game of "It's time to be thankful and I'm thankful for", which my friend and her Girl Scout leader, Melissa, taught them at the last meeting. One person states the line and tells what they are thankful for. The second person states the line and what the first person's answer was and what their answer is. And so on and so forth. This year, besides her family and friends, Emily said she was thankfor for the cat stealing a piece of turkey. :)

It was a most delicious day and I'm most thankful for the leftovers I got to enjoy for lunch today!

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