Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We did! My sister came from Michigan with her family and my kids spent Wednesday afternoon playing with their cousins. It’s sad because they live about 5 or 6 hours from us and we haven’t seen them in a year. Anyway, it was nice to catch up.

Thanksgiving dinner was at my house this year. I had to beg off last year because of a book deadline, but no such problem this year 🙁 I tried some different things. I loosened the skin of my turkey and rubbed under the skin and in the cavity with salt. My 16 pound bird cooked upside down in a 325 oven for 2 hours before I flipped it over and finished it at 450 for another 1 1/2 hours. Thanks, America’s Test Kitchen. Their recipe was much more involved, so I didn’t do much more than this, but it did improve the juiciness of the meat. It got rave reviews.

I also tried a new recipe for sweet potatoes. (Scroll down until you see the recipe for Sweet Potato Delight.) No more heating them up from a can. The recipe was so easy – roast the potatoes, then mash them with milk, maple syrup, cinnamon and nutmeg. Then I topped it with pecans. I made this the night before and stuck it in the oven while the turkey rested and was carved. I was so surprise at how good it tasted. More rave reviews.

Alyssa made my sister’s recipe for herb rolls – a basic dinner roll recipe with rosemary, oregano, and thyme (I think those were the ingredients – can’t remember. Email or comment if you want the recipe). Yum, yum, yum. We finished up with homemade applesauce and my mother’s famous apple and pumpkin pies. What a meal.

A couple of times over the weekend we played picture telephone. Fun, fun, funny game. For Jonalyn, we played many hands of Uno. My other sister came from Illinois on Friday and we had fun bowling together. Jonalyn has the right attitude – it doesn’t matter how many pins you get down, high five everyone every time they bowl 🙂

I also got some Christmas shopping done and I’m on my way for some Cyber Monday deals.

Hope you all had a wonderful holiday. What was everyone up to? (Sorry about the lack of pictures. I forgot the camera. All weekend.)