Thanksgiving Menu...

This year for Thanksgiving we are at our house with no company coming over, so I took a poll and got all the boys favorite dishes, and "have to have" foods, so I could try and make everyone happy.

Why do I set myself up this way? I do know better... really.

Their requests were pretty simple...

The teenager ~ Strawberry Cheesecake... okay I have no idea how to make it, but I found a recipe in my hand writing for a no bake cheesecake, so I will try that out, it looks simple enough.

Then the strong silent mysterious man ~ mashed potatoes and gravy, and turkey (what???? mr. picky eats maybe 2 ounces of turkey all year long... it's all good, I love turkey, so it can stay on the menu). Plus his work gave him one this year, so nice... I love this as a little bonus!!! We have been given our turkey so many years, I would not even know how to go buy one now. And apple pie.

So I made up the menu, and added a few of my favorites and a few things I figured they would miss if they weren't on the table, and I always feel the need to made some new recipe I see on the Food Network or find on a blog (last year I made this turkey brine from Pioneer Woman Cooks, yummy, but kind of allot to go through and a little messy for me).

Turkey

mashed potatoes

gravy

rolls

green bean casserole

my mom's sage dressing

orange glaze carrots

.....

apple pie w/vanilla ice cream

strawberry cheesecake

Mom Dayley's pumpkin fluff

(I saw the cutest thing in a magazine one time, to print out the menu on cute fall paper and put it in a frame with some rafia tying some wheat sprigs wrapped around one side, and display it on the table the days before and in the beginning of the buffet on Thanksgiving Day... I have always wanted to do that when I do a big Thanksgiving dinner at my house, but I am afraid it would fall on "deaf ears" as they say, at my house. So I won't waste any time or inkjet on that... but one day!!!!!)

I might have started a little early last week, because once I had a menu... I wanted to go shopping and thought it was a good idea to beat the crowd.

Then I got home with everything and realized it was still a week and two days away... and some of the excitement of cooking has died down. My food would be fine, but would I be able to get back that festive feeling?

This morning I did my early AM store run to pick up milk, and with all the Thanksgiving stuff in the isles of the store, I quickly got back in the mood to cook again. I got my milk, and I was thinking about my turkey all frozen hard as a rock and how I better get home and get it thawed out soon as it might take a few days.

And then I couldn't get the vision of the Black Diamond Bakery "Gobbler" sandwiches out of my head! They are the yummiest sammies on their homemade sour dough bread with turkey and cream cheese and cranberry sauce (and I don't even like cranberry sauce) with sprouts if you want them. Oh soooo yummy!!!

So then I couldn't leave the store without cranberry sauce... I had to try and make one of those sammies on Friday after Thanksgiving. First where to find the cranberries... are they with the fruit, with the gravy, in the produce section... no there in a can right?

Finally I had to ask, but before they could show me they had to know what kind I wanted.... so I was like I don't know, show me where they are then I will decide what kind I want from there. It was a little bit of a vicious circle, but I finally got directions to the cranberry isle... on the bottom shelf of the canned fruits (jeeesh... they don't even get moved up a shelf on the week of Thanksgiving... poor cranberries).

So then the choice... lumpy or jelly?

I could not, to save my life, remember what kind they might have used in Black Diamond... I can't call my Mom, it is like 430am her time... a little early for frivolous questions. If I had the number for the bakery, I would have called them myself... except it might have been some secret ingredient they wouldn't give out that kind of information.

The lumpy stuff looked pretty good... but the only memory I could come up with, even going way way back in my mind about cranberry sauce... is that Grandpa Dayley likes the jelly stuff.

I always make fun of this stuff, but that is what I bought!

I hope Thanksgiving goes smooth, but for some weird reason I am looking forward to the leftovers on Friday more now... so I can open my cranberry sauce, that I don't even like unless it is with cream cheese and sourdough in a turkey gobbler (that I hope I can replicate... crossing my fingers).

No, I don't think I set myself up for dissappointment at all!

Do you?