Picture Pages, Picture Pages...

So we had our Thanksgiving dinner a week early. I remembered why I bumped it up early - we have plans to go to the Semper Danica Christmas party on the 29th, and I didn't want to be doing 2 huge things in the same week.

Semper Danica is a gamer's guild - they have members that play all sorts of MMORPG's (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game). I think I'm the only American in the guild - one of the requisites is you must speak/read/write Danish. They're a good bunch of folks there, and both Hubby and I are looking forward to an evening getting to know the people behind the avatars. There's around 100 people signed up for the party (across all the games I think the guild has over 1000 members), so it should be a very interesting night.

Matthias ate his dinner a bit early and was unfortunately ready for bed before Hubby's mother, brother and Katrina came over for dinner. I think Vivi was disappointed, but we couldn't justify keeping the baby up past his bedtime (and thus deal with a screaming child for most of the night) just for her to see him on that day. She came over the day after and had an hour or so with him here. He's also FIRMLY into the "Stranger Danger" period where it took just about the entire hour for him to warm up to her. This means we'll have to bring him over to her house EARLY the day of the Christmas party so he's got time to like her again before we leave, otherwise her house will be hell.

Matthias is also becoming VERY independent. (He doesn't get that from me, no - not at all.) He wants to feed himself (whether it be the bottle OR spoon feedings) so we've had to be a bit creative with feedings so that we're still in control of what goes on. This, of course, doesn't mean he doesn't get to have fun on his own:


Here we're eating Turkey with veggies.

Or, just the bowl - take your pick.

I apparently wasn't shoveling it into his mouth quick enough, so he decided to try to go get his own.

At least he's realized that yes, plastic tastes like crap when you try to eat it.





I give him points for being able to get the spoon into his mouth reasonably well.


At least the first few attempts, and then he gets excited that he's feeding himself and yeah... he's no longer quite as neat.









Slowly but surely, we get messier and messier...

You'll notice it's a different spoon.

I started giving him his own spoon to hold while I'm feeding him with another, so when he opens his mouth to feed himself, I can sneak my spoon in first and WOW MOM, I'm DOING IT!!








Here's the aftermath:

All in all, not too bad - it's not in his hair or in his ears.









So, as far as Turkey day went, yes I made lots and LOTS of food. It's a family tradition from Gram Chase!

The prep:


The bird itself was a little over 10 pounds, and had been slaughtered the day before we picked it up.

They missed a feather or two which I took care of.

I didn't mind the thought of a freshly slaughtered bird, so long as it wasn't still, well, WARM when I picked it up, know what I mean?




This is the beginning of my stuffing. There's a bit of garlic, vidalia onion, celery and leeks in butter, with salt, pepper and some herbs.

Mom uses oysters in her stuffing but yeah, I hate fish.

It was bad enough just making the clam chowder for Hubby's family, the smell made me want to gag.





Here's how it went into the bird.

Added Sage, Thyme, Rosemary and a bit of Basil with diced apples and fresh cranberries.












Now silly me, I forgot to take a picture of the bird when it came out of the oven before it was carved, as well as a photo of the chowder (which everyone said tasted very good. They also thought it was funny I made Hubby test it for taste, because I wasn't going to do it.)


So, here's a picture of the right half of the bird - the left half is gone.

Hubby's brother Jonathon got the leg and picked it clean.

I had done what Mom does basically, but with my own twist to it - she likes to rub it down with crisco oil, I used herbed butter both under and on the skin itself. The skin came out nicely crisp and the meat was tender and juicy.




I made a cake from scratch, but was lazy and used some Betty Crocker frosting.

This was actually my 'birthday' cake to myself.

I figured it'd be easier to get it all eaten if I made it for a time when we had company, that way we wouldn't be stuck trying to finish it off just Hubby and myself.





We had been out shopping in Føtex when I spied frozen blueberries in the veggies section. Normally blueberries are HELLATIOUSLY expensive here in Denmark, especially if they're out of season (5$ for a cup of berries), but these weren't bad.

So I grabbed a bunch of bags and decided to make a blueberry pie.

OMG YUM. It's been ages since I've had a blueberry pie.




Of course, I made a pecan pie as well. Neither pecan pies nor blueberry pies are very common in Denmark, so it was quite an experience watching everyone else eat them.

Hubby was surprised by the blueberry pie - it tasted nothing like he had been expecting - he had been expecting it to be sweeter and fruitier - and the cinnamon was a complete shocker.






Here's Jonathon and Katrina having coffee after the desserts.

I made sure they went home with some of each cake because yeah, I didn't want to get stuck with it all.











This is Vivi, Hubby's mother. She brought extra insulin for desserts and then complained she should have brought a bigger size pants to change into.


Yep, a Thanksgiving dinner just like Gram Chase used to make!