With a Side of Hope

In a small bowl, combine softened butter, poultry seasoning, garlic herb sauce mix, and crushed garlic. Use a fork to mix together until well combined. Cover and put in the refrigerator for 15 to 30 minutes, until firm but not hard.

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F.

Arrange celery, carrots, and half of the diced onions in the bottom of a roasting pan. Add chicken broth and set aside.

Rinse the thawed turkey and pat dry. Use your finger to carefully loosen the skin around the entire bird. Take the butter mixture and cut into large pieces. Place the butter pieces under the skin of the entire turkey. Rub the remaining butter pieces on the outside of the skin and season with salt and pepper. Stuff the inside of turkey cavity with remaining onions, fresh herb poultry blend, and lemon slices. (Truss if necessary.) Insert the pop-up thermometer at an angle about 3-inches down from the neck cavity and 2-inches from the breast bone, in the thickest part of the breast.

Place turkey on the bed of vegetables in roasting pan. Place in the oven and reduce temperature to 325 degrees F. Roast for 1 hour, then baste with pan juices every 20 minutes until thermometer pops up or until an instant-read thermometer inserted into the thigh registers 180 degrees F, about 3 hours.

 

 

 

This turkey recipe came out fabulous!  This will definitely be my go-to turkey recipe from now on!  Be cautious of the cooking times depending on how big your turkey is.  Since my turkey was much larger than 12 pounds, I cooked my turkey for 3 and a half hours.  It came out perfectly moist and delicious!

Back tracking a bit, after I finished cooking everything Mike and I went to his Aunt’s house.  I stayed for a little while to catch up with everyone and then once they sat down to dinner, I ventured home so I could finish preparing dinner with my family.  Now back to my dinner..

Don’t make fun of me, but I have never made stuffing from scratch before.  I think I am going to try next year but for this year, I stayed with my favorite and my families favorite, Stove Top!

 

 

I also made my favorite Whipped Sweet Potato Casserole recipe.  I make this every year.  You check out my recipe page for the recipe or click on the link that I posted.  It’s a sure-fire winner!  I think the thing that makes the difference is the fact that I use pumpkin pie spice instead of the other spices the recipe suggests.

 

I also roasted up some veggies to serve along with dinner.

 

 

 

 

Dinner came out absolutely perfectly!!  I love the turkey and everything that I made to go with it.  I was very happy with how everything turned out.  I think this was the best Thanksgiving dinner that I made to date!  I was very proud of myself.  I was thankful that I was able to spend Thanksgiving with the people who mean the most to me.  I am so thankful for my family and my friends for without them, I would be nothing.

Thanks to the Foodbuzz Tastemaker Program and Duncan Hines, I was able to create a dessert to serve for Thanksgiving.  This dessert definitely did not look as how I planned but it tasted fabulous!

 

 

 

I used the triple chocolate cake mix, the cherry pie filling, the glaze and cool whip to make my cake.  I first started off by preparing 2 round cakes from the chocolate cake mix.  I substituted the vegetable oil for applesauce as I always do for baking.  Once the cakes were baked and cooled, I topped the bottom layer with cool whip and placed cherry pie filling on top.  Then I took the second cake and put that on top of the first.  I used chocolate glaze on top and then placed more cool whip and cherry pie filling.  Since the cake looked strange to me, I made it look worse by adding cool whip around the sides.  This was an awful looking cake and I was nervous to serve it but it smelled so darn good!

 

This cake may have looked awful but it sure tasted delicious!  I loved the Duncan Hines cake mix and it cooked perfectly.  It was very chocolately.  The glaze was good too and how can you go wrong with cherry pie filling?  I love it!

I also put out an apple pie that I bought from the store.  This ended up tasting awful!

 

 

Melissa ended up bringing two delicious desserts that she made!  First up was her chocolate chip pumpkin bread!  It was moist and delicious!  It had such good pumpkin and chocolate flavor.

 

She also made a delicious Pumpkin Mousse Pie Trifle.  It tasted so light and fluffy and had pieces of graham cracker crust inside.  It was really great!

 

Mike joined us just in time for dessert and coffee.  I had such a wonderful Thanksgiving.  I am so thankful for everything and everyone that I have in my life.  I feel blessed that I have amazing people by my side each and everyday.

How was your Thanksgiving?  What is your favorite Thanksgiving food?

On Black Friday, I woke up at my normal time that I get up for work and was at Melissa and my mom’s house by 6am!  Before we knew it, we were out shopping.  It was actually not crowded at all anywhere we went.  I think it was because a lot of people went out at 12am.  I’m glad that we didn’t go out that early.  I was happy with our decision to go out on Friday morning.

I ended up getting 2 movies for really cheap and I got some of the DIY things that I wanted for our wedding!!  I still have a long way to go with things I need to get but at least I got a start on a few things!  Thank you, Melissa for getting me some of the items!

I picked up two baskets that I am going to use for the mens and women’s bathroom baskets I am making.  They are exactly what I was looking for.  I am going to probably fluff the bottom of the basket with tissue paper to make it look more full and then add the items for the bathroom on top.  The graphic designer that I am going to hire to do all of our stationary and graphic things, is going to design the signs that I will hot glue on the front of the baskets.  I cannot wait!  I got the big part of one of the diy crafts I am going to do and I got a hot glue gun and some ribbon that will match our colors perfectly.

I was excited about that!  I also picked up a new k-cup flavor that I thought sounded great.  Melissa and my mom got a few things too.  We decided to take a break and stop at IHop for breakfast/lunch.  I guess it was brunch!

 

 

I had ordered pumpkin pancakes but they didn’t come out the way that I wanted.  I just wanted plain pumpkin pancakes and I ended up with these.

 

I was not a fan!  I don’t like pecan and they put some kind of syrup on them that I didn’t really like either.  I was disappointed about that.

After enjoying our brunch, we went to a few more stores before going home for the rest of the afternoon.  I was exhausted.  I went home and Mike and I ran to the supermarket to pick up a few items we needed for dinner.  Our friends, Russ, Kristen and their daughter Kyleigh were coming over for dinner.  We served Thanksgiving leftovers as well as a creation that Mike and I made.

We made cheesesteak wontons!

 

All we did was cook up ground beef, an onion, and minced garlic.  We also seasoned the beef with salt, pepper, and some ketchup.  Then we stuffed the wontons, sprayed them with cooking spray and cooked them for 10 minutes.  They came out perfectly crisp!

 

We had a lot of fun hanging out with Russ and Kristen.  I think they had a good time too.  I felt bad that they had to drive back to Maryland last night after dinner.  I wish that they lived closer.  Maybe one day.  :)

Now, here I am.  I’m not exactly sure what I am going to be doing today.  I do know that I need to get my glasses adjusted at the mall.  So I might venture there and see what is going on.  I’m just waiting for Mike to get home from the gym.

Have a great Saturday and enjoy the rest of your holiday weekend!