Angie Homemaker: A Very PW Thanksgiving

I had no idea that cooking an entire Thanksgiving dinner all by yourself would be so much work.

A few years ago, we hosted Thanksgiving at our house, but we had other people helping with food. This year, however, our company was a bunch of college guys and it just didn't feel right to make them bring food. Since there were only going to be a few of us, I decided to have a simple Thanksgiving--PW brined turkey, PW mash potatoes (but no sweet potatoes--sad), PW stuffing, Gramma Nadine's cranberry jello salad, some veggies (brussel sprout & asparagus), PW rolls and one pie. Pumpkin. Just your basic Thanksgiving foods. Plus the special breakfast we needed to have (Gramma Nadine's egg sausage casserole, Bob's cinnamon rolls and pineapple & blackberries I found on super-sale). I was actually disappointed that there weren't more people for me to cook for and that I was forced to do such a simple meal. But on Thursday afternoon, after two days of cooking, I was very glad there was no one else coming. Oh, did I mention that I decided I needed to make everything from scratch this year? I've been reading too much Pioneer Woman, who is my new hero. I'm just a little obsessed with her right now. Ok, I admit it. I have a total crush on her. Her food is easy to make, uses normal ingredients you have actually heard of before and will probably have in your kitchen, and it tastes delicious. Plus, she has step-by-step picture instructions on how to make all her dishes. You can never go wrong making one of her recipes (thus, the majority of my dishes were hers, some of them with my own little twist).

All my work was worth the effort though, because dinner turned out splendidly. I was actually quite surprised and pleased that I didn't mess anything up. Especially the turkey (last time I made turkey it was not so great) and my never-made-before, completely-from-scratch dishes--stuffing, gravy, cranberry jello, and pie crust. Actually, I did totally mess up the jello salad and had to call my Gramma at 11pm her time for help. Fortunately, she was still awake making the very same jello for our east-coast family's dinner. But that's the benefit of cooking things ahead of time--you can try again the next day and still have a wonderful dish to serve for Thanksgiving dinner.

Lessons I learned this year:

It's ok to not make everything from scratch (stuffing from a box next year!)
Start early (like days early) in case you mess up and need to do an entire dish over again
Butter makes the best turkey baste
Mashed potatoes can never have too much better
Butter makes everything better
Dried rosemary on Buttered Rosemary Rolls is not an acceptable substitute for fresh rosemary
Pie Crust really isn't that hard to make
Cooking turkey doesn't have to be a terrifying adventure
Always have a Gramma available to call for help (or take the time to thoroughly read the recipe)
It's not the best idea to plan a huge breakfast in addition to your Thanksgiving dinner if you're the only one cooking
Never attempted gluten-free cinnamon rolls; nothing good can from it
You can always trust the Pioneer Woman's cooking advice

Someone wanted turkey really bad

The cinnamon rolls...I started to frost them, then decided I should probably take a picture of the pretty swirls. My MIL in gluten intolerant and I want to make these when she visits at Christmas this year, so I did a trial run and made some of these with gluten-free flour. Gag. Me. They were simply awful. We threw them all out. Poor, sad, gluten-intollerants. I don't know how you do it.