Our First Thanksgiving

on our own as a family was a little intimidating for me. At least, the prospect of it was. And although we were invited to several different places, Tyler and I decided to do our own thing this year.

Well, mostly I decided. I really was dreading the idea of going somewhere other than our apartment for Thanksgiving 1) because traveling with Richie can be quite the ordeal, and 2) because I really didn't want to worry about pumping and storing breastmilk.

Plus, Tyler was only getting Thanksgiving day off from work, and I really wanted to be able to enjoy the holiday with him.

So after  making that decision, I then had to face the dinner itself. For a few weeks before Thanksgiving, I kept my eyes out for good sales on the traditional Thanksgiving fare, and did some research and thinking about our Thanksgiving meal for two.

Tyler's only request for the meal was that we have his mom's candied yams as part of our feast. No problem. (Even though I'd never made it before.)

The more I thought about our Thanksgiving meal, the more certain I was that making a whole turkey for just the two of us would be a big mistake. There would be way too much meat there for us, and although we could freeze the leftover meat, we still would have faced a mound of food that we'd never get to.

So I opted for Cornish game hens. (Which I've never made before.)

And I also thought it would be good to have homemade stuffing. (Which I'd also never made before.)

I considered making my own pies. (Which I've never done on my own before.)

And I really wanted a green bean casserole. (Again, I've never made that either.)

Are we seeing a pattern here? The more and more I thought about Thanksgiving, the more I realized what a fool I had been my whole life. I don't think I've ever once helped my mom out with our Thanksgiving feast. My responsibility for the meal was always putting together the vegetable snack tray and sometimes the cracker snack tray. Neither of which were any actual work. I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

Although I'm fairly confident in my cooking abilities, and I'm always game to try a new recipe, pretty much the whole meal was going to consist of new recipes.

So to make things easier on myself, I opted for store bought pies (Thank you to Macey's for having Marie Callender's Razzleberry pie--Tyler's favorite--and chocolate cream pie on sale for less than $4). The whole time I was buying and preparing the food, I kept telling myself that at least the pies would turn out just fine, even if nothing else did.

I contacted my mom for the stuffing recipe. Then I hit up Jill for her candied yams. Then I headed over to allrecipes.com (my go-to recipe site) for the Cornish game hens.

I decided to make mashed potatoes and a green salad, but skip the green bean casserole. (Because, really, we didn't need it. Although, I did wish for it on Thanksgiving day.)

I bought everything we needed on Monday night. Then I did all of the vegetable prep on Wednesday night. (And cooked the candied yams.)

So when Thursday rolled around, all I had to do was throw stuff together and then throw it in the oven (where applicable.)

Check out our results:

And a close-up:

Overall, I'd consider the meal a success.

The Cornish game hens were SO good. (I'll definitely be making them again.)

The candied yams were a delicious and sweet compliment to the meal.

Mashed potatoes were wonderful.

The stuffing was okay. I didn't have any sage. (What spice rack comes without dried sage?!) And I think I made the bread bits too big and the veggies too small. I definitely want to try it again, and see if I can have better success. I ended up using the stuffing like soft croutons atop my green salad.

The pies were great, of course. (Thanks again, Marie Callender.)

Things I missed from this meal, and wished we could have had:

- Green bean casserole (I might make this for kicks sometime this week. I'm seriously craving it.)

- GRAVY (I could have made it, but I just got lazy and didn't.)

- Pumpkin pie (Is it really Thanksgiving without a hint of pumpkin?)

- Rolls (especially homemade ones)

- The veggie platter (Sometimes a girl needs her sweet pickles!)

Truthfully, our meal was pretty simple, and pretty easy to make. The trickiest part was timing everything at the end so all the food would be hot. But I feel like I managed that all nicely.

And truthfully, I had a lot of fun putting it all together. 

(With cute boys like these, who wouldn't enjoy making them a good meal?)

(PS -- Richie hates hats. But this hat and bib combo from Kim and Kris was just too cute not to put on. As soon as Richie saw the hat coming, he started squirming and complaining.)

(The obligatory "I'm here, too" picture.)

Hope you all enjoyed your Thanksgiving as much as I did mine!