Thanksgiving at Home

So Thanksgiving at my home involved was on the Saturday night BEFORE Thanksgiving and only included the people who mean the most to me:
Vanie
Taylor, new 18 year old roommate
Kaitlyn, new 21 year old roommate
Xavier, 21-year old roommate's fiancee

John
and of course, my beloved brother Brad. I was there, too.
This year I had a fabulous idea. SELF magazine had published these 6 healthy and fabulous side dishes. So everyone was assigned two recipes while I made Rachel Ray Turkey Cutlets Parmagiano, the only turkey I still have ever made. Kaitlyn opted to make her own mashed potato recipe. Taylor made chocolate cream pie. EXCEPT that....this was Taylor's first time cooking it away from home. The instructions read, "cream together sugar and butter until sugar is dissolved." Taylor thought to herself, "Well the only way to get sugar to dissolve properly is to boil it." Which means, we drank the chocolate cream pie because, even after 9 hours in the fridge and 1 hour in the freezer, boiled sugar does not set. It was still delicious (just like her mom's was the week after!).

Brad did an awesome job on green beans with blackened sage and hazelnuts. AND pomegranate pear stuffing.
John rocked Butternut squash with cherries and apples (even though it took at least twice as long to cook as the recipe said it was supposed to....)
Vanie made awesome sweet potato biscuits and cherry cranberry sauce (the biscuits weren't whole wheat, but whole wheat biscuit mix does not exist in this state!)



Here's everyone with their masterpieces. I'm so grateful for good friends who humor me in this craziness!


(Real Thanksgiving was spent at our former bishop's house and was also delicious and wonderful and perfect. But I didn't take pictures.)


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