Our 1st Thanksgiving as Husband & Wife

Friends Season 10 - The One With the Late Thanksgiving

We had two Thanksgivings this year.  The first was on the beach with some of Ben's, David's, Naomi's and Casey's friends from their masters class.  It was great to meet new people and they were all so welcoming and sweet.. Good people. :) They also loved and raved about my homemade biscuits so that won them all bonus points as well!

On Friday after Thanksgiving, Naomi and I prepared a Thanksgiving feast for our Dubai family. (Dubai family = Naomi, Casey, David, Ben & me).  We put a lot of last minute thought into what we wanted to do (probably should have started planning a bit earlier....) and everything turned out wonderfully. We got together around 9:30 a.m. to finalize our menu and went to Lulu's (grocery store) to pick up what we needed.  Naomi and I cooked our first turkey together with the help of conversations with our mothers and MIL's and the internet. The turkey was kosher so we didn't have to brine it which was nice.  We made Ben take out the innards because neither of us wanted to stick our hand in there. I cut up an onion to put inside and was throwing the pieces in until Ben came over and just shoved them all in. He he..... We forgot fresh rosemary, so we sprinkled some dried rosemary inside and on the outside of the turkey. We also melted some butter and poured over top of the turkey and then shoved it in the oven! Aside from turkey we also had stuffing, roast sweet potatoes (which were put in the microwave to be reheated and left until the next morning....oops.), homemade biscuits, turkey gravy, sweet potato pie, snow pie, [made by Ben/me], mashed potatoes [made by David], green bean casserole, corn casserole, cranberry sauce, apple crisp and a couple appetizers [made by Naomi/Casey]. We hosted supper at our place and ate 2 hours later than expected and then did dessert, homemade hot chocolate with Baileys and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation at the K's. It was really quite wonderful.

While we missed our family and friends, it was truly a great Thanksgiving!  It was a learning experience in having to cook everything ourselves, but it was a lot of fun to cook everything and prepare a large meal with my loving husband.  We work very well together in the kitchen and we really enjoy cooking together.  Part of the way through cooking Ben took over getting things in and out of the oven.  I tend to burn myself a lot and he doesn't.  I happily accepted his help.  We also learned how expensive it is to put together such a large meal and how much time and effort is put into getting everything ready.  At the end of the day both Ben and I were ready to just sit/lay down and relax.  My old lady body was aching and Ben said he was sore from everything as well.  Kudos to our mothers.  This experience was yet another thing that makes me marvel at how much of a rock star my mom is. 

Shopping for all of the food was a bit of a challenge here.  Naomi and I went to Geant and got some of the things we needed on Thursday.  On Friday morning we went to Choithrams, a British grocery store, and got the remainder of what we needed.  I was excited to find Cool Whip but disappointed that they didn't have Pillsbury frozen pie crusts.  Those taste almost as good as homemade crusts and are much easier.  Ben kind of scoffed at me for wanting pre-made pie crusts, giving me the, "Well my mom always makes her own...", bit.  (FYI - my mother-in-law is the queen of pies... SO good!).  I appointed him pie crust maker for our two pies and he quickly learned why I wanted to get the pre-made.  We didn't have much time to get everything done and I wanted to cheat and have those already done.  He did a great job.  The pie crusts were delicious, but I'm pretty sure he plans on never making a pie crust again unless absolutely necessary.  :)  He's more of a meal maker rather than a baker.  I'm the baker in this duo.

While we did our cooking we had Christmas music playing, the windows open and a candle burning.  We sang, danced around and really enjoyed ourselves.  I'm excited for future holidays and having fun together while preparing everything.  I'm also excited to host our families in our home in the future!