my day before thanksgiving

So far I've been fairly productive this day-before Thanksgiving.  The cranberry sauce is done, the apple pie filling is done (since I'm making apple pie pockets, I thought I could make the filling in advance, right?), the chicken is brining, albeit way too early apparently, the sweet potato for pumpkin pie is nice and mashed... I guess that's all I've done for now, felt like so much more.  My assistant, Weasley, hasn't been much of a help.

Of course when it comes down to making 12 dishes for 2 people, there needs to be revisions.  Unfortunately, there probably weren't as many revisions as there probably needed to be.  Oh well.  It's the day before Thanksgiving, and luckily the husband and I were one of the very few people grocery shopping this morning, due to the wonderful fact that Thanksgiving in Canada already took place in October.  Even though Thanksgiving is my very favorite holiday, there are some unpleasant things to think about, especially when you're a 22-years-old married student with slightly little to no income.  The first obstacle was paying for our meal.  It wasn't really an obstacle so much as an impossible feat, but that's okay, it's a holiday!  So $85.00 less in our pockets, we purchased our ingredients to make our hopefully delightful feast.  Another obstacle, I forgot about when dreaming about the perfect roasted chicken (since the husband is a vegetarian, I decided I would make myself a small roasted chicken) is that I actually have to ROAST a CHICKEN.  I was a vegetarian for most of my life up until college, except for every Thanksgiving and Christmas (for mom's perfect honey-brined turkey) and then I would eat meat occasionally here and there, but I've never really cooked meat on my own.  I remember feeling grossed out when I would see my mom pull out all the turkey's 'innards' before brining the bird.  It's pretty barbaric.  So here I am, carefully washing the chicken under freezing water, praying that I have not created some sort of salmonella or botulism attack in our kitchen, and just feeling all kinds of guilty and murderous for purchasing this chicken in the first place.  I'm sure I'll think it was totally worth it after eating it, but for now, grossed out.

So while I go about the day cooking and cleaning, I thought it best to drink some tea, keep Julie and Julia in the background (for cooking inspiration) and wear my comfy new shoes!

(side note about that, although Canada sucks when it comes to buying things from the states, I do love my new Clark wallabees especially with bright purple socks)



















And finally, the Thanksgiving table(s) (yes tables, every table we can muster up) set up!

bringing out all the pie plates, stands, and dishes for tour ginormous meal

watching the Friends thanksgiving episodes, the best for the holiday

if you look closely, you can see a small fabric llama that my sister made for little Weasley

some fall decorations I put up

So that's it for now, hopefully I'll have my revised Thanksgiving menu up with some food-making photos and some recipes!