"Miss Funke, We Done Did Good"

Well, we pulled it off. Three roommates with one dream: a Thanksgiving meal with our friends.

I dunno if you had a slow enough Sunday to follow our high jinx, so I'll recap (click links for full blog):

My freelance check came in, and my roommates and I decided to actually go through with our Thanksgiving dinner. (Originally, I held back because I didn't think I could chip in, and we weren't sure if we'd have the time either.)

This meant that I had to cook my first turkey.

Which was intimidating, and sleep depriving.

I learned the biggest concern when cooking a turkey is that it might be dry.

And after all that, no one was showing up.

Well, Fred the turkey took almost 10 hours to cook, and gravy is a lot harder to make than I remembered - here are some tips on making turkey gravy:

• DON'T ADD A TON OF CORN STARCH! Man, that gravy tasted nasty...with like a chalky after-taste to boot.
• DON'T TRY TO SAVE IT WITH A TON OF TURKEY DRIPPINGS...it becomes gelatinous and no matter how much stock you put in, it still kinda looks like chunky snot. (It was eventually delicious, but briefly, as soon as it cooled it was grossest fat chunk gel ever.)

We had two guests arrive in time for pigs in a blanket (Tom's mini hot dogs in Pilsbury croissant), our friends J and Ben that we know from the Liar. They came with high spirits and ready to help and in the last hours we pulled it together.

The table was upstairs, the boys had put up the mini tree, hung the big bow on the door, and strung the lights. Emily and I brought up the meal- it was a ridiculously large, but absolutely delicious.

Between courses we went across to the park and went on the slides. We learned this helps you make room for pie. On our way back we rung our neighbor's doorbell and they joined us for desserts and another round of the main meal.

Then we all just sat around contently talking about which foods we enjoyed the most, and the ones we didn't get to, but wished we had room for.

Everyone went home with left overs and the accord that we may have outdone real Thanksgiving.

All Emily, Tom, and I know is, we really pulled it off! We put a Thanksgiving meal together, and it was worth every penny.