More Pictures of Thanksgiving!

I almost dumped the turkey all over myself before this guy, Vanya, came to my rescue and helped me.
We fit 14 people in our kitchen with a ton of food.

And my first attempt at gravy!

Ground Cloves on Tongue - Bad Idea!

Thanksgiving time was a wonderful time of trying to cook the turkey for the 1st time in my life, making stuffing, attempting to make pumpkin pie without canned pumpkin, grinding cloves in a coffee grinder because we couldn't find ground cloves anywhere, grating a wedge of parmesan as a topping for boiled broccoli, figuring out how to make cream of mushroom soup without a can of soup, and trying to have it all ready for the 14 people that showed up starting at 1:30pm on the Sunday after Thanksgiving.

The turkey turned out, after deciding that about 20lbs. of peices would be enough! It was so fun realizing that I could actually cook the turkey!

I tried and accomplished making pumpkin pie from some baked pumpkin Julie had frozen. It worked, but I had to make 2 crusts because only half the filling filled the 1st pie crust. I made a 2nd crust real quick and it all worked out.

I would NOT recommend tasting cloves that have been ground, regardless of whether it looks like coffee or not. Julie and I tried to find ground cloves, but couldn't, so I decided to try grinding the whole cloves in a coffee grinder. After I had cleaned the grinder to make sure there would not be any more coffee in it, I ground the cloves. When the cloves were ground, I pulled the container out that had the ground cloves. It looked like ground coffee, so I tasted it to make sure it wasn't. Nope! Cloves! Nice and Hot! Oh well, a bad mistake on my part. I started coughing and between laughs tried to tell Julie what I had just done. :) It was too funny. I had a burnt part on my tongue! I felt it for a few days, but it just made Thanksgiving memorable.

It turned out to be a fun group of people from 5 different countries. We had a wonderful time. I have a few more fun photos of the meal, but will post them at a later time.