This year many of the people from our squadron decided to stay here in Misawa for Thanksgiving, so we had many people to celebrate my favorite holiday with. In fact - there were a few too many celebrations to choose from! We finally ended up selecting two Thanksgiving feasts to attend - the first one around lunch time was a large gathering from the squadron, and the second, primary meal that night at Derick and Lisa's house with our neighbors and Lisa's work associates.
The big squadron Thanksgiving meal was held at one of the recreation rooms in a tower housing unit here on North Base. Everyone brought a dish or two to share and we all sat around small tables, eating and laughing together. Honestly one of my favorite things from this party was my friend Rachel's cider that she made with sparkling cider, ginger and cranberries. SO beautiful and refreshing!
There was so much good food that we had to be careful not to fill up before the main event. Derick and Lisa had our friend buy the largest turkey they could find at the commissary and stick it in their freezer while we were gone. Sure enough, they came home to a 23 lb. frozen bird!! Lisa has this incredible recipe from Martha Stewart and so she has been working on thawing, brining, marinating, and stuffing this bird all week, plus rubbing butter under its skin and all kinds of other fabulous tricks that made it, no joke, the best turkey I have ever tasted!
SO EXCITED!
23 lbs of juicy, meaty goodness.
When it came time to carve the turkey, there was an awkward pause as we asked who wanted to do the honors. Thankfully there was one man in the house who knew what he was doing, and so our neighbor Nate Denton picked up a knife and went to town. There were exclamations from all as he lifted out the first of two massive turkey breasts. There was NO WAY that our modest gathering of 10 could even make a dent in that mound of meat.
You can see that she stuffed it with apples and onions!
Any of you who have eaten Thanksgiving dinner with me in the past, you know I'm all about the side dishes. Between Lisa and I, we had a decent spread. At James' request, I made my grandmother's now world-famous sweet potato casserole. As always, people said these were some of the best sweet potatoes they've ever had. I also decided to attempt making my grandmother's creamed corn. This has been my favorite holiday food for as long as I can remember, and I'd be completely satisfied if my Thanksgiving meal consisted of nothing but a giant, steaming vat of this stuff. Considering this was my first-ever attempt at it, the corn turned out ok. But it's going to take several more tries to get it anywhere close to the creamy goodness my grandmother can whip up. I also used our bread maker to make some honey wheat bread.
Lisa's contributions far outweighed my own. She had an entire menu planned out of dishes from Martha - including real cranberry sauce, deviled eggs, mashed potatoes, stuffing, baked artichokes, blanched green beans and an assortment of apple and pumpkin pies made from scratch! Oh, it was SO GOOD!
James decided he wanted dark meat so he tore off a drumstick.
So full, happy and very thankful for awesome friends. =^)
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