Tag: Thanksgiving prep

Weekend Things & Thanksgiving Excitement

LaurenLeave a comment

Friends!  It’s here — Thanksgiving week — and I’m not sure I’ll make it through the next three days.  That’s how excited I am and how much I love Thanksgiving.  I think I might be driving Joey insane with my holiday season enthusiasm.  Meanwhile, he’s put a ban on all Christmas talk, music and decorations until after Thursday.  No fun!

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If I told you I spent a majority of the weekend watching TV (specifically Gilmore Girls and anything Thanksgiving themed on Food Network, would you think I’m totally lame?  Oh…

Aside from watching too much “G.G.” (<– which from here on out officially stands for Gilmore Girls and not Gossip Girl or Golden Girls) and Food Network, we also did some super exciting things like cooking salmon for dinner, making a trip to Home Depot (the unofficial meeting place of all homeowners) and staying up too late to watch the AMAs.

I made a HD list that included a shelf, some wire baskets, countertop samples and “a million twinkle lights.”  That must remain in their box until after Thursday.  Still no fun!

I also went to yoga on Saturday evening, had Sunday brunch with Jenn and my sister (good food and girl time makes me insanely happy) and “helped” my mom make her famous stuffing.  “Helped” as in, I peeled and cut some shrimp then spent the rest of the time sitting and watching her do the rest.  I tasted a spoonful and it just added to my Thanksgiving anticipation.  I also told my mom she should average one bottle of wine per person on Thursday and I don’t think she took me very seriously…

As for the AMAs, I may of had to wait until after the Cowboys game was over (yeah, that catch was amazing but the memes are even better!), but it was worth it.  And I don’t know who those random people they kept showing in the crowd were but I would totally rather see random people dance than Taylor Swift.  P.S. Sam Smith’s voice is pure magic.

Anyway, with Thanksgiving being three days away (!!!), I thought I’d share the recipes I’m using this year.  These sweet potato biscuits (I’m gonna try freezing the butter and grating it into the flour…), this green bean and bacon vinaigrette dish, wild rice dressing, mustardy Brussels sprouts (the best!), the good old sweet potato casserole and a dairy-free pie (say what?).  We did all our shopping last night and I never want to be in grocery on the Sunday before Thanksgiving again.

What are you making for Thanksgiving?!

 

Weekend Things

LaurenLeave a comment

Ah, don’t you just love when you go to write your weekend recap post only to discover that every picture you took this weekend was of food?  No, just me on that one?  Well I’d like to pretend that’s not the case here today, but it totally totally is the case.  Hey, it happens!

Top Weekend Priority: (Besides food, apparently…) Not leaving the house all day on Saturday.  It snowed on and off all day and was something like 20 degrees so we lined up some cooking, some beer brewing and lots of TV binging to keep us occupied and indoors all day.  It was the best!

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Joey made banana pancakes.  A LOT of banana pancakes!

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And I did that thing where I say I’m going to relax in bed, then realized I can’t relax and got up to make us some peppermint mochas.  ‘Cept the chocolate chips never melted and the peppermint extract just floated up to make this oily layer on top…  I definitely drank it anyways, then ate the chocolate chips out of the bottom of the cup with a fork.

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Does this count as a non-food picture?!

We haven’t had beer in our kegerator since shortly after our wedding and it’s been SO weird.  And also, beer bottles take up a lot of fridge space so it was time to brew again.  This nut brown ale is SO dark.  But I feel like tis the season for dark beers so I’m excited.

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Every year, we do a trial run of potential Thanksgiving contributions and this year’s was extra delicious.  Sweet potato biscuits, wild rice dressing, olive oil mashed potatoes + vegan gravy and greens beans with bacon vinaigrette.  Let’s not talk about that part where I cut the mashed potato recipe back by two-thirds and forgot to tell Joey so he added the full amount of EVOO and spices.  Um, they were just a little oily.  But all was fixed when we bought more potatoes the next day and mixed them into the mega-oily potatoes.

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Then Joey made me eat leftover wedding cake.  He’s so mean! 😛

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On Sunday, my mom, my sister and I went out to breakfast.  Can that be a weekly tradition, please??  The restaurant we went to is conveniently close to home plus it’s cute, cozy and makes awesome food (though I don’t think I ever need to order the breakfast sandwich that’s sandwiched between TWO GRILLED CHEESE SANDWICHES).

Afterwards, I took myself to yoga (the class was at capacity and also my shoulders are SO SORE today — dang chaturangas!), bought an $11 jar of bottled roasted chestnuts with some help from a man named Moonstone (don’t even ask), baked cookies filled with candy and started Season 2 of Gilmore Girls.  When are they going to change the intro and capitalize the G in “girls”?!

What did you do this weekend?

Are you cooking for Thanksgiving?

Is there snow where you live?