Our Friendsgiving was a success!
After cooking and baking for what felt like two days straight, we had a delicious Thanksgiving feast.
My sister and I prepared a bunch of sides and desserts while Ross and Ryan were in charge of the turkey.
The turkey recipe they followed had the turkey cook breast side down, which allowed all of the juice and turkey drippings to drip into the breasts, keeping them nice and moist.
We didn’t have any twine to use to tie the turkey legs together, so the guys got creative.
Foil twine! So scrappy.
My sister and I managed to time all of the the food fairly well. The only thing that wasn’t ready right on time was the mashed potatoes.
We followed a recipe from The Pioneer Woman and made them a day ahead, but when we went to reheat them in the oven for 30 minutes like the recipe said, they were still completely cold when we removed them from the oven.
Nothin’ a little time in the microwave can’t fix!
Eventually we had a feast!
Highlights:
Sweet potato casserole (possibly my favorite)
Ryan’s grandma’s amazing glazed carrots recipe
Roasted green beans (we needed something healthy)
Cinnamon orange cranberry sauce
My mom’s homemade stuffing recipe
And the turkey, of course!
My friend Laurel also made a batch of creamy macaroni and cheese by following a Paula Deen recipe and Ross made gravy from scratch that was awesome.
You better believe I filled my plate with a bit of everything.
After dinner, we all hung out, played games (Balderdash!) and had a good time before digging into dessert.
Pumpkin pie, tunnel of fudge bundt cake, apple pie (made by Laurel), ice cream, whipped cream and a pumpkin roll (<—it worked!)!
Again, I had a bit of everything and went back for seconds of the pumpkin pie and chocolate bundt cake.
I went to sleep feeling like a stuffed turkey and it was glorious!
Happy Friendsgiving!
Thanks to this awesome idea, I’ve planned my very own Friendsgiving for Nov 26 🙂
how fun! i hope you have a blast!
Those pictures are making me hungry for turkey!! 😀
It looks delicious! I’m glad everything turned out okay! Your moms stuffing looks like a good recipe! I’m definitely a sucker for good stuffing. That + cranberry sauce is something I look forward to every Thanksgiving!
Yum! I can’t wait for Thanksgiving! I think Leslie and Ross should get together! 🙂
I’m so excited for Thanksgiving! All of that stuff looks glorious.
How fun! And I love that tip about cooking the turkey. The turkey is usually my LEAST favorite part of the Thanksgiving meal because it’s too dry!
The meal looks amazing! I love your apron…too cute!
Everything looks amazing!! Such a fun idea. I looove sweet potato casserole too, so good!
You just made me even more excited for Thanksgiving! Sweet potato casserole is my fav as well!!
Looks so fun! Can you ask your sis to tutorial her hair and how she gets that cute curl? 🙂
I love your apron!
The tin foil fix made me think of the blue string incident in Bridget Jones’ diary…LOVE THAT MOVIE!
Your friendsgiving looks like it was such a blast! And SO delicious! Glad to see your pumpkin roll turned out!
Can you post the Cinnamon orange cranberry sauce recipe??
Sweet potatoes with marshmallows is sooooo the best part of Thanksgiving!!! I love that you do Friendsgiving. We always do Friendmas, but I never feel up to doing all the Thanksgiving cooking twice.
I have never seen sweet potatoes with marshmallow until now! Now I know what Donkey means when he tells Shrek “Sweet potatoes are nothing with marshmallows”
oooops meant nothing without marshmallows
All of this looks absolutely delicious! A Friendsgiving is such a good idea!
Cinnamon orange cranberry sounds awesome, what is the recipe for that one???
What an awesome day! So glad it was a sucess. 🙂
P.S. – I was some of your cranberry sauce.
What a scrumptious feast for Friendsgiving-so sweet to celebrate friends! I love that everyone made a delicious contribution-gravy from scratch!?!? Ross is quite a guy :), as is Ryan!
Friendsgiving is such a cool idea! I would love to do something like that!
I would absolutely love it if you could post your sweet potato casserole recipe. I have never seen anything like it, but would love to try it.
I have been searching the internet for recipes, but am curious to see yours as well just to compare if possible. Pleeeeeeeeease!
holy smokes this all looks amazing!!! YUMM.
Yum!!! This makes me really excited for Thanksgiving!
You & your sis are adorable!! What a perfect pre-Thanksgiving feast with friends! 🙂 love it
Everything looks delicious! We’re not going to make it to the U.S. for Thanksgiving this year so I’ll just have to live vicariously through everyone else’s feast!
I would attempt to cook, but turkey’s are hard to come by in Belgium and my oven is the size of a small microwave!
Everything looks so delicious! Glad you all had a wonderful time 🙂
Looks like you had a great time! Can’t wait for turkey dinner now. It was so neat to scroll down and see that you guys know Ross! I went to high school with him. Small world!
You guys look like you had fun! Proves you can celebrate holidays AND eat healthy!
Can you post the cranberry orange sauce recipe?!
Not sure if you every check out her blog, but Gina’s Skinny Recipes posted a lighter version pumpkin roll (you know, for when you didn’t just rock another 1/2 marathon!).
http://www.skinnytaste.com/2011/11/pumpkin-roll-lightened-up.html