Our feast

Yesterday Brian and I got together with the Haskews, Hensals, and Lockwoods for a Thanksgiving meal. A girl Kari met in language class also joined us. So there were 9 adults and 5 kids -- a pretty big crowd in my opinion.

The Lockwoods hosted our celebration. I took this during the calm before everyone arrived.
I was really looking forward to this meal not only because I like typical Thanksgiving food, but also because this was the first time I had a big role in preparing a Thanksgiving meal. Our menu consisted of turkey, corn, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, dressing, bread and pies.

I'm always overly picky about the foods I prepare, but everything came out acceptable. The macaroni and cheese wasn't creamy because I wasn't paying enough attention to the recipe and used about twice as many noodles as I should have. But it was still good. I thought the dressing was a little dry, but after eating some leftovers today I think the problem was that the cornbread was a too dense. And I went a little overboard with the bread. I made crescent rolls -- which had been specifically requested for this meal -- as well as cornbread and biscuits. Originally I was making cornbread only for the dressing, but it was so tasty I decided to make a second pan. The second pan was a bit denser and that's the one that ended up in the dressing. If you try the recipe, I recommend that you switch the measurements for the flour and cornmeal (2 cups cornmeal and 1.5 cups flour). I switched the measurements on the first pan, but only had 1.5 cups of cornmeal for the second pan. Also, make you sure mix the batter at least 5 minutes. I should have mixed the second batch longer. Kari and Ira made three pies: pecan, pumpkin and a reduced-sugar apple. I sampled all three and they were delicious.

Okay, enough with the words, here are some pictures.

The feast. This was after everyone had filled their plates. We had enough leftovers for another full meal (and then some.)

Meal time. Click on the links to see the photos in Flickr: 1. Dinner, 2. Kids, 3. conversation, 4. Kari and Zaden

Carli is really growing up. She loves holding Zaden.

Zaden loves to play with the doors on the dog crates. He's growing up too -- look at all his teeth!
Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving filled with family and friends!