An All-American Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is one of my absolute favorite holidays! I love everything about it! I love the food, the mom approved opportunity to eat pie for breakfast, the overwhelming feelings of gratitude/thanksgiving, and the opportunity to gather together with family and friends! It doesn't hurt that I was born on Thanksgiving. Having a birthday so close to a holiday gives my family the excuse to have both pie and cake every year as part of our feast.
This year marks the second year I haven't spent Thanksgiving with my family. It's really sad to think about all the wonderful foods I'm missing. I always get extremely homesick around holidays that I can't be home to celebrate. At least I have wonderful friends and roommates to spend the holiday with which takes care of most of my homesickness.
I was invited to spend Thanksgiving with my roommate Nella's family. Nella and her family are originally from the Philippines so their Thanksgivings since coming to the US have consisted of the pre-made box you can buy at the local grocery store plus rice. If you know any Filipinos, you know how much they love their rice. A few weeks after Nella's family had invited me, Nella came up to me and asked if I knew how to cook Thanksgiving dinner. Her sister and her brother were the one's who were wondering. This is how I ended up cooking dinner for them and they provided everything I needed. Well except for the apple pie and the potatoes. I'm very picky when it comes to these two things. I love apple pie made from granny smith apples and my potatoes have to be Idaho Russet Burbanks. I'm an Idaho girl what can I say. I can taste the difference between potato species.
The invitation came as a blessing in disguise because I woke up the day before Thanksgiving to no power in our apartment. Then come to find out, the whole campus didn't have power. I currently live in on-campus housing so I was kicked out of my apartment until power was restored (which didn't happen until late Saturday afternoon). So I ended up at Nella's house before they were ready for me to be there (ie before the house was clean). But it had it's benefits, we went and saw a movie that I've been excited about since I learned it was coming out.

Yes! We went and saw The Muppets! My inner child was super happy! Not to mention there was guest cameo that nobody knew about! Good job Disney for keeping that one quiet! I loved it but I wish there had been more Beaker and Dr. Bunsen.
The wonderful day came and was filled with all kinds of Thanksgiving fun! I introduced Nella and her siblings to the joy of watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Next came the cooking of the feast. Which thankfully we didn't need to start until early afternoon because we weren't eating until 5pm so Nella's mom (who is a nurse) could sleep before going to work.
The menu consisted of turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing, green bean casserole, creamy cheesy corn, cheese stuffed celery, 3-layer jello, crescent rolls, funeral potatoes, candied yams, deviled eggs, and cranberry sauce. Well and apple and pecan pie with homemade whipped cream and ice cream of course! It turned out awesome! It was so good! Though I think they were a little overwhelmed by the amount of food.

I must admit. I had never used a wok while preparing Thanksgiving dinner before this year.

Mmmm... stuffing!

Oh Stove Top! How I love thee!

Well, mylene was paying attention enough to notice the camera...

Mylene represents what I have been in previous years. The person who tries everything as we're cooking.

Nestor getting ready to make the cheese stuffed celery. He was so proud of that celery.

Nella was so excited to use her apron. We decided she views aprons like I view umbrellas. They are toys that you look forward to using.

She was pretty proud of her 3-layer jello.

Mmmm... cheesy corn!

This is how much I love the Baltazar's. I HATE yams but I made them candied yams any way. Mylene was too eager to test to see if they were good. Here is one time that cooking to taste would have bit me in the butt.

Mylene had a slight mishap with the cornstarch.

They were amazed at the size of the potatoes I brought. I thought they looked normal. Oh potatoes how I love you!

Yet again, Mylene and Nestor took my usual job.

They licked the beaters while I mashed potatoes.

The table with the whole spread.

Mmmm... look at those potatoes.

Me and the Baltazar family minus Nella who was taking the picture.

Mylene's plate after she'd been eating all afternoon.

Nella's dad: "So where's the rice?"

Can I say how much I love Thanksgiving!?!

The only problem was that their sink backed up half way through cooking dinner so we did the dishes the old fashioned way...

... with a dryer...

... an assembly line...

... and a wash and rinse bucket.

It was an exciting time. It took us 2 hours to wash the dishes.

Our after dinner recreation consisted in playing Mario Kart on the Wii.

It was a little intense.

We were all a little competitive...

It was an awesome Thanksgiving, full of food, friends, Mario Kart, and phone calls with the fam. I'm certainly a very blessed person this Thanksgiving season.