Lessons From Thanksgiving Dinner

Can I just say Thanksgiving was sooooo fun?! As far as dinner preparations, overall things went pretty smoothly. Especially considering we had 20 people here, most of whom brought part of the meal and needed kitchen space or appliances to complete the finishing touches. We joked about how many cooks we could FIT in the kitchen, and for the last hour or two before we ate it was not uncommon to have 5-6 of us in the cooking area. When we were preparing the turkey I couldn't find the gizzards, which I wanted for the soup. I couldn't believe someone had left the gizzards out of our turkey. It took me about 5 minutes to remember that there are two holes in the bird, and they were in the other one. The biggest oops I made was doing the candied yams (never done those before). I put a nice solid layer of large marshmallows on top of the yams, put a lid on, and stuck them in the oven alongside the stuffing. About 30 minutes later someone smelled smoke. We opened the oven and found that marshmallows expand in heat and had spilled over the top of the container onto the floor of the oven, sparking a fire in the back left corner. Next time we'll put just a few marshamallows on, then spread them. We'll also put foil in the bottom of the oven to make clean up easier. But those were really the only things that went wrong. All the food was delicious, everyone enjoyed each other's company, there was lots of laughter and talk and games, and I can't wait to do it all again next year.