Our Turkey Day

We hosted Thanksgiving this year for the first time in about 10 years. I was a little nervous about it at first (the turkey was intimidating me a bit), but then the hubs decided to smoke our turkey on his new Big Green Egg so after that task was off my plate, I got really excited about hosting and it turned out to be a wonderful day.

Earlier in the week I pulled out my china to set our table.  I can maybe count on one hand how many times we have used in in the past 11 years of marriage, so I was happy to see it out.

That turkey was a lot of work and even though I wasn't cooking on the oven, the prep involved felt like a 3 day thing.

It was totally worth it though because the result was amazing.  We watched about 10 different YouTube videos with directions on how to smoke a turkey on the Egg and one recipe caught our eye.  It involved brining the bird in an apple juice/apple cider vinegar mix, basting it with brown sugar and butter, and stuffing it with brown sugar and cinnamon stuffed apples.

The meat was juicy, tender, full of flavor and it literally was falling off the bone.  It was that good!  After stuffing ourselves with delicious food and working some of that off by playing a game of baseball outside, it was time for desserts!  I made my Memaw's pecan pie recipe and it took every ounce of will power not to cut into it before yesterday.  It's the one thing I look forward to having every Thanksgiving, just like I did when I was a little girl.  The girls helped me bake it and sharing that time with them made me think about all the wonderful memories of my grandparents.

After everyone left, my little helper and I were thankful when the kitchen was finally cleaned!

After 3 days of baking and prepping for yesterday's feast, it was nice to sit down in front of the fire and just be thankful for all I have.  Most of all I feel blessed with a loving husband and to be able to call these sweet ones mine.  I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!