Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Friendsgiving

This weekend I had a dinner party at my house that will definitely become a tradition from now on. We recently finished decorating our new house, and my husband decided we needed to have a dinner party with our friends to celebrate/break it in. We asked our friends to bring their favorite Thanksgiving side dish and we told them we would take care of the turkey and a few other things. One of our friends decided to dub it Friendsgiving, and I pretty much became obsessed with that name.
One of the two tables - the second table was our patio furniture

Me and the hubby ended up buying a turkey because we were nowhere near ready to screw up the main dish of this party (maybe next year we will be more adventurous).
Carving the turkey

In addition to the turkey I decided to make my grandmother’s oyster dressing, mashed potatoes, and turkey gravy. The mashed potatoes turned out pretty good and were easier to make than I thought. I was really nervous about making my grandmother’s oyster dressing, but it turned out great! I was so excited I was able to do it justice.
Oyster dressing! Yum!

Now the turkey gravy...that’s another story. My friend from work came over early to watch the LSU game and decided to help me start on the gravy. The recipe seemed easy enough (and came with a video), but my first mistake was getting it online from a chef who evidently didn’t believe in exact measurements. Have you ever noticed that? Real chefs apparently don’t need exact measurements and can handle a “dash” of this and a “sprinkle” of that. I, on the other hand, am by no means a real chef and cannot interpret a “dash” to save my life. What we messed up on was the amount of flour, which apparently is not a good thing to mess up on with a gravy. It was a very fun process which involved “whisking the shit out of it,” and eventually we ended up with a not-too-bad tasting gravy.
Adding some of the jug of wine to the gravy, while "whisking the shit out of it"

Dinner was a ton of fun. Everyone did an amazing job of contributing and all of the food ended up being so good! We had everything you could think of: turkey, gravy, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, mac and cheese, green bean casserole, broccoli casserole, pumpkin rolls, AND cake! Yum, yum, yum!
All of the food!

After dinner we headed outside for some survivor flip cup (similar to normal flip cup, but if your team looses you have to vote someone off of the team). I’m pretty sure every family thanksgiving should include a game of flip cup. Just saying. And then, like normal 20-somethings, we decided to have a Disney karaoke party. Only my friends...
Karaoke time

It was such a success, we decided we need to have a Friendsmas party in December!
Great night with great friends!

3 comments:

  1. Oh Steph - this looked like so much fun!!! I wish I could have been there. What a fun tradition to have every year!

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  2. Sounds like a blast! Can't believe you bought the turkey...

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  3. What...I wasn't quite ready to burn down our pretty new house! haha You can let me know how your turkey goes and I'll have some advice for next year :-)
    And if you're making your own gravy, whatever you do, DO NOT add too much flour. It's a disaster waiting to happen.

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