The Fletchers: Thanksgiving!

This post is going to be all about Thanksgiving Day, so it will be super long with lots of pictures! I will do another post the activities that occurred with Scott's family during their time here.

This was my first year making Thanksgiving dinner. I have always brought a dish to the other Thanksgiving dinners I went to, so it was pretty stress-free. I had the menu planned for about a month so that helped cut down on stress. I knew that I wanted it to be a classic Thanksgiving dinner. I like trying different things, but I always resort back to what I'm comfortable with. I look around on Pinterest, of course, for ideas and found some great recipes.

The day before Thanksgiving was all about making the desserts, sweet potato casserole and Jell-O pretzel salad. It only got stressful when everyone was going to visit Brita and her family and I was torn on whether to go or stay and keep working on the food. I went because I hadn't seen Dylan (new nephew) yet and I didn't want anyone to think that I didn't care about him. Around 5:00, I decided to leave and finish up making the dishes at home. The apple pie took a little bit longer than I thought, but I am glad that I made what I did the day before because it definitely reduced stress Thanksgiving day.

The apple pie turned out pretty good! The crust was a little too thick in my opinion (didn't roll it out thin enough) and I forgot to put a crumble topping on top, but it was still plenty flavorful. I tried the lattice top technique, which looks great, but my fluting of the edges didn't come across so well. I used a recipe that I got from college.

I forgot to get a picture of the whole cheesecake, but this is a nice looking piece. Scott loves the Jell-O brand cheesecake, so I was fine making that because it is much easier than cheesecake from scratch, but I do enjoy the real thing a lot better.

Had to try all three! I also made pumpkin chocolate chip cookies for those who didn't want pie or cheesecake and it was a great idea. Such yumminess.

The Jell-O pretzel salad caused me the most trouble when it should have been the easiest. When I first made the Jell-O, I wasn't thinking and left the Jell-O mixture in a bowl to set up. Yeah, that didn't work at all. On the way home from Brita's, I bought another Jell-O package and tried again. This time, I put it in a metal pan and it set up way to quickly. It was only supposed to be partly set-up so you could still pour it on top, but it hardened up all the way, so it fell out in chunks. Despite that it doesn't look too pretty, it sure tasted good.

Trying to get a picture of all the layers: Pretzels on bottom, cream cheese mixture in the middle and Jell-O on top.

The sweet potato casserole doesn't look too pretty either, but it tasted great. The recipe I used was from Our Best Bites, but their recipe called for coconut on top and I was not doing that. I knew that brown sugar is commonly used, so I melted some brown sugar and butter together and poured it on top. It added such a great sweet flavor along with the marshmallows on top.

Thanksgiving day really wasn't that stressful for me. I had plenty of help which made things go by quickly. We had an easy breakfast of muffins, eggs and hash browns. I love appetizer foods, so we had crackers & cheese, deviled eggs (something my Aunt Kathy always made), shrimp and little acorn treats.

David & Nadine having fun looking at the Black Friday ads!

I bought a turkey breast, so it only took 3hours to cook and I didn't do any basting to it and it was still very moist. I rubbed butter and Santa Maria Style Seasoning all over it. Maddie enjoyed splurging on Thanksgiving and had some turkey too.

Scott carving the turkey! We finally got to use the carving set we got for a wedding gift.

Other side dishes included stuffing, green beans & carrots, salad, mashed potatoes & gravy and rolls (which Nadine took care of).

Bought this gravy dish at Kohl's! Nadine also kindly made the gravy.

I did the mashed potatoes in the crock pot. I really liked how creamy they were and how I didn't have to think about them until it was time for dinner.