Thanksgiving 2011

Zoey, RyLee & Baden

 Thanksgiving 2011 was spent in the southern part of the state at my parents house.  Since Jed's brother and family from California did not come out this year like they usually do, we decided to seek out warmer weather for the holiday.  We enjoyed the weekend in St. George with all of my family except for my brother Aaron.  I got all "crafty" and made these turkey shirts for the cousins.  Something I saw on Pinterest and thought would be cute. 

 I changed up the idea a little bit from what I saw on the Internet and kinda made it my "own".  I like how they turned out.  I learned  a few things so that if I ever do something like this again, it will be easier.

 Jed had his heart set on frying a turkey for Thanksgiving this year.  Luckily my parents are pretty open to trying new things.  They figure most of Jed's food experiments work out pretty good. So they gave him the thumbs up.  After searching high and low for a turkey fryer(hint: don't wait until the day before Thanksgiving to buy your turkey fryer), we finally found one and were in business. 

Turkey has been brined and is ready to cook!

 

Mike was standing by with a fire extinguisher.  Just in case...

Yummy Turkey after it has been FRIED!

 We learned that the turkey fryer works best with a smaller turkey*.  This bad boy on Thanksgiving day was 22 lbs..  A little big for the fryer.  It took about an hour to cook and by the time it was done the outside skin was almost black.  Despite the appearance on the outside, the inside was moist and delicious!  We also had Jed's famous sausage stuffing.  Which is always a hit.  And All of the traditional side dishes adorned the table.  We ate way too much food.  Who doesn't right?  After long naps and time for our bellies to feel less full, we ate some delicious desserts.  Traditional pumpkin pie, mincemeat for my mom, apple pie for my dad.  I made a new dessert that I found on one of my favorite cooking sites (Our Best Bites).  It is called Pumpkin Cheesecake with Pecan Ginger Snap Crust.  OH MY GOODNESS!  This was so very, very yummy!  This is a keeper in my recipe file forever. All in all we had a wonderful Turkey Day 2011!

*We have since fried a much smaller turkey in about half the time and I dare say it was even better than the bigger one.