Thanksgiving 2009

This Thanksgiving, I cooked a turkey all by myself! I got some brining bags and brine from William Sonoma. For those of you cooking novices who don't know, brining is soaking your poultry or pork in a salt water concoction for about 24 hours in the refrigerator (that really makes me sound like I know what I'm talking about). It promised my turkey would be moist and succulent. It was both of those things. And it looked really pretty, too! I also made gravy from scratch. I made a homemade caramel apple pecan pie, too, but it tasted better than it looked!

This is the brine in a giant zip lock bag (or brining bag...William Sonoma can charge more for calling it something fancy). I added 2 gallons of water and a 15 pound turkey to this bag.

This is one pretty bird, if I do say so myself!!

It was also Gavin's first Thanksgiving. He was dressed to the 9's in his Thanksgiving outfit, complete with his "Baby's First Thanksgiving" bib. He really enjoyed all of the food we had. I think his favorites were the mashed potatoes that I made and the sweet potatoes that Erica made. She was sweet enough to make half of her sweet potato casserole without nuts so the babies could have some.

We are so thankful this holiday season for our Dallas "family". It's hard not being around our family, and we are so happy to have such great friends to share good times with...including Gavin's future wife, Saylor .
Our sweet friends...