Thanksgiving Dinner

My husband and I have been married just shy of 3 years. In that time, I have learned that holidays without family aren't very exciting. I wanted our first Thanksgiving/Christmas as a married couple to be just the 2 of us. It ends up being like any other day of the year; which isn't a bad thing, but it's so nice having family around for holidays! So my mom, dad, and brother came to visit and we had a real Thanksgiving dinner.

 Green Bean Casserole. Turns out that's all the onion topping I had, haha.

 Cinnamon Apples (First time to make)

 Sweet Tea

 Fried Okra (hubs did that)

The okra didn't even make it to the table. We ate it all first :)

Deep Fried Turkey

My husband did this on his own for the first time this year.

Nothing burned down!! :)

Deep Fried Turkey is delicious!!

Sweet Potato Casserole (First time recipe)

 Homemade Cornbread (first time also)

yum yum

Everything actually turned out pretty well! I'm especially happy with the sweet potatoes and cornbread.

By the way, my brother is (again) the one who took the awesome pictures. Man, I wish he was around more!

Of course, there's dessert. I got a Southern Living magazine and it had a big article about 3 cakes. I thought one of those would be perfect! I decided on Layered Peppermint Cheesecake.

 Pictures from the magazine

Here's the recipe. You can read that right?

 Mixing the cream cheese and sugar

Adding the eggs...

All of the peppermints

Crushing the peppermints

Preparing the pans for the cheesecake

Putting the cheesecake pan in a larger pan, filled with water

Cheesecake cooling

Sorry I didn't take pictures of the icing or cake. The cake is just a basic white cake. No big thing. But, following the recipe from the magazine, I did not get three layers out of it. I barely got 2. Also, I would bake the cake before making the cheesecake, unless you have five 8" cake pans. The cheesecakes stay in the pans for around 6 hours. Fortunately I had 2 other 8" pans to use for the cakes. 

 There's my bro taking the good pictures.

 The finished product. Looks just like the magazine, right? ha

Here are some good pictures:

I didn't love the cake... it got eaten, but I really wanted some chocolate pie once I finally got to try the cake. Maybe it's that I don't feel like peppermint and cheesecake should go together (now that I've tried it). Or the fact that it was my first time to ever make cheesecake and I might need more practice. Or that I don't think I quite got the icing just right or that I don't like white chocolate. Ha, who knows. But I tried it.

It was a fantastic Thanksgiving and I can't wait for Christmas! I'll be headed to my hometown and look forward to seeing lots of family and friends!