Our second married Thanksgiving

This year, Thanksgiving was mostly just another day. Jared had to work in the morning on Thursday, so we decided that we would have our meal on Friday. This practice isn't very unusual for me, since my family has done a big Thanksgiving meal on Friday night for a few years now. But this year, Jared and I cooked everything on our own.

For the first time in my life (and the first time in Jared's), we cooked a whole turkey. Thanks to Alton Brown's recipe, we cleared out our refrigerator to fit a 5-gallon bucket full of turkey brine. The recipe was really easy and pretty fool-proof, and while our turkey didn't quite turn out as brown as Alton's, it was some of the most delicious, moist meat I have ever had! We used our roaster instead of the oven (because we had to use the oven for stuffing, rolls, and pumpkin pie, of course!), but it worked out just wonderfully.

And one of the best parts of Thanksgiving is the leftovers, which we have been enjoying. We also boiled down the turkey frame and have some lovely turkey jello in the fridge for soup later! Delicious!

While I missed the company of family and friends, we at least had each other, and besides, it was kind of nice not to have to stuff myself with three different Thanksgiving meals! Our goal over the next year is to make some more friends so that we will have some more people with whom to share our wonderful recipes!