Thanksgiving Day Memories with Lots of Good Food!

The years go by so fast, now. Memories flood my mind, memories of when I was a child playing so hard outside with my cousins that we'd come in, when they called us for the big dinner, all sweaty and tired and probably not really wanting to eat turkey but would rather want to keep playing hide-and-go-seek or whatever other game it was. Always lots of relatives and lots of food. Lots of memories.

This year I decided to make Ina Garten's cinnamon-sugar doughnuts for our breakfast. Mmmm, they were sure good and paired with juicy pork sausage links they made a most scrumptious meal!

I had never made doughnuts before! Gee, they're really easy when you make and bake cake ones. The only difficulty for me was filling just the right amount of batter into the doughnut pan. My first batch looked like muffin tops! Ha. And the second batch were scorched -- too little batter for the cooking time. But, the third time around, they came out almost perfect and oh so good! 

I also made one of our traditional foods, just plain cranberries cooked with one cup water and one cup sugar, in a saucepan on the stove until the berries begin to burst and you wonder why every year you forget that they splatter all over unless you pay attention. *sigh*

                                            They are so GOOD and so darn easy to make!

I think we always had canned cranberry sauce when I was little. Canned foods were popular back then. Still, I wonder why we didn't have fresh berries; maybe because they splatter all over!

I think the small turkeys taste better, plus they are so much easier to cook, and I don't know about you, but we just don't do so well with too many leftovers. Anyway, here's the 12 lb. turkey I cooked.

This turkey was well seasoned with fresh thyme, sage, kosher salt and fresh cracked black pepper after I rubbed olive oil all over him. I also smeared truffle butter under the skin and put and onion, fresh thyme and fresh sage leaves inside the cavity. And here's how it looked when ready to eat.

                                                          Well, it didn't last too long!