May all you and yours have a God Blessed Thanksgiving, this includes a month late Thanksgiving greeting to those in Canada.

Still eating left overs.
I spent the bucks for pen raised pheasant and ordered two 4 pound pheasants from a farm in Wisc.
At a cost , with postage of 30 bucks a bird, actually quite low priced nowadays; the foo-foo grocery stores around here no longer carry frozen pheasants.
I cooked on 12 pound turkey and one pheasant.

Those cooking instruction you see online, OR on the wrapping of the bird you buy , maybe, maybe work if you have a 5,000 dollar ultra super duper range in some test kitchen but in the real world are BS.

Instructions said 2 hours for turkey and online instructions said one and one-half split temp. cooking for pheasant.

The little pop out doo-hickey on the turkey popped out 3 hours after I put it in, and it took a goodly amount over 2 hours for the pheasant to be done.
Both were nice and juicy.
The Turkey was pre-brined but I followed fairly closely how ot brne a pheasant from an online source.
He actually brined a Peafowl but his method worked well.
Instead of kosher , I used rock black salt and dumped in a fourth of a bottle of Greek seasoning that had been taking up space of well over a decade.
Even after cooking the pheasant for as long as I did , the juice flowed with the pinkish color the pros said they prefer , although they said most people want it be more well done.
Sharons Niece, her husband and son came over and they all were amazed at how good the pheasant was.
Sadly this , barring another problem, is probably the last Thanksgiving family style dinner we will have, the one before this 4 years ago was due to Sharon's sister dying just before Thanksgiving so Missy was still here at Thanksgiving and this years was due to the Corona Virus stopping Missy from heading down to her husbands Mother's place in Illinois.

It was a very, very good day.

Checking into future holidays, Canadian Thanksgiving this year is two weeks before my birthday and U.S. Thanksgiving is exactly one month after my birthday.
If the border was not closed, the Canadian day would be a good time to finally visit Winnipeg as my parents went there once but I could not go with them.

ARRRHH, I missed Canadian Thanksgiving, I hope you all had a God Blessed Thanks Giving!

Went to three casinos for my birthday and lost my butt at each but Sharon won a little.

Will be going to another casino for Thanksgiving as there is not one around to have regular Thanksgiving dinner for but the casino we went to for one last time had an excellent Turkey dinner, so I will take less money and eat more.

Happy belated birthday @RpR!

Thank you very much.

When I/westill had family gatherings we usually had Turkey for both Thanksgiving and Christmas (Ma liked duck so when she still cooked she also cooked a duck or goose for Christmas).
After Ma got cancer in 1986, I did 98.6 percent of the cooking after that

Now I have only cooked a family dinner twice in the past five years, once because of a funeral (Sharon's sister died) and once because of the Virus -- Sharon's niece could not go to their normal Thanksgiving place.
Oddly thirty plus years ago when I first spent time with Sharon, she liked turkey to the point we would have it several times a year without a holiday.

This year, a Twin Cities casino was giving away turkeys for just showing up (or so they said) so my Cousin and I went to get our turkeys (and supposedly a pie).
Turns out all they gave out was a one day only voucher for 25 dollars from Hy-Vee, therefore; we went to Hy-Vee for our turkeys and pie.
Well it turned out, that there were NO whole turkeys in the turkey bin, only breasts.
The service dudes and gals turned out to be totally clueless as to why, and had ZERO idea of if they had more. We got a lot of -- UMMM, UH, AH, have to talked to the meat people? -- who also knew nothing.

Now Hy-Vee has a LOT of freezer areas, so I started walking through the store and found turkey (breasts) in three different areas tens of feet apart and then -BADDABOOM - I found one freezer with 3 , yes a whole 3, whole heritage turkeys (all of which were 28 dollars and 78 cents. )1.99 a pound.
My cousin was off searching other areas.
I said close enough and grabbed one and paid the extra 3 dollars (no pie).

Well eventually a gal found more whole turkeys (Butterball ) for .99 cents a pound, in the back room and brought them out but I was happy with what I got and I don't need no darn pie any way.
He got a turkey breast and pit for his 25 bucks.

We are going to go to Jackpot Junction Casino down by Morton , as we had an excellent Thanksgiving dinner there some years back, but again due to the virus, Casinos have pretty much shut down the restaurants. (Buffets are gone forever.) so I found one restaurant in Willmar, Mn that has a Thanksgiving buffet for $18, as the only other choices are Perkins or Country Kitchen, each a matter of hundreds of feet from where we are going, we will try this one as it is new , to us.
I was surprised one Truck-Stop restaurant that has good reviews, close to the place we are going to, its restaurant is closed for Thanksgiving.
I miss the family gatherings and dinners, greatly, so the fact the virus let us have one last year, was a bright spot in a year the Feds. hyped -- YOU ARE GOING TO DIE -- doom and gloom rhetoric continually.

Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas to you of the Great White North.
We went to a Thanksgiving Buffet in Willmar, Mn and from the crowd, that is the way a LOT of families do it nowadays.
I was surprised , while in town traffic was sparse, out on the highways there was a lot more than I expected, annoyingly traveling in gaggles.
My taste buds were snafu today but Sharon said the food was good and she is fussy.
She won at the Casino and we found out, yesterday that the Casino buffet was open for Thanksgiving but we paid 18 bucks per-person, while the casino charged 26 per-person.

It was chilly but a nice sunny day.
Well here in 36 minutes Thanksgiving ends , so, Merry Christmas.

Our trip to and from Thanksgiving dinner was a little sketchy due to the weather - it was fine at home, a few flakes of snow in the air but nothing remarkable. Dinner was about 40 miles due north of us, so right in the middle of the UP, near Trenary; the side road off the highway was extremely slippery on the way there, and on the way home it was even worse and the highway was also snow covered and slippery most of the way. Although we got home without incident, we heard today that there was a bad 3-car accident in Escanaba about an hour after we went through there, with 2 people killed and 7 hospitalized with injuries... waiting to find out more and hoping we don't know anyone that was involved, but that is certainly a sad ending to the holiday for whoever it was

Once again Happy Canadian Thanksgiving, 21 days late.

May all of you have a joyful, God blessed Thanksgiving.

Thank you, RpR - and I also hope everyone had a good day today

I am not only thankful for all of the extended family that we spent the day and dinner with, but for a beautiful early-winter day with sunshine and mild temperatures (and clear roads).

I finally got a computer with all the keys again and I'm thankful for that and for all the ways God has blessed me this year which are too many to elaborate! Hope you all had a blessed Thanksgiving also.

WELL, I have not baked a pie for Thanksgiving for a fair number of years and one with a home-made crust for even longer.

I got the urge so I bought four squash of the type that are not stringing, two different varieties, and baked them last night.
One is a small Turks Turban and they are sweet.
Any way.
I scraped them into different bowl so I could make two pies, one with each squash.
THEN -- I got the urge to make pie crust.

Now I have old, very old cook books but none here , so the net became where I found one I liked; It is made with Lard and butter.
I totally forgot how much time it takes to make a crust old school style.

I put the dough in the fridge to cool down and started with the pie mixture.
I found one was made for adding booze to the mixture and it had the other items in the recipe I wanted. (some of those quick and easy ones are barely a pumpkin pie.)

This one used heavy cream, a lot of eggs, and I had Jumbos, and a large amount of the standard spices, I added Pecans to the mix plus booze . I used a Praline Cream I got on sale at the liquor store.
Well I did use a blender for mixing but the blender was almost full before I even added the squash -- (I was making a double batch.)
So I split up the mixture , minus squash, into two measuring cups.

I waited about an hour and pulled the dough out of the fridge, split it in half, and went about rolling out pie crusts.
If one has not done that for awhile it is a lot harder than it used to be.
I could not find my fancy stone roller so I had to use an old wood one that does not work as well, dough likes to stick to wood ones.
After a bit of cussing I got one rolled out and went to get the mixture; it seems what I put in it made it thicken up a bit.
Getting it out of the blender was not as easy as I remember it used to be.
I got it all out , put it in the oven and just under an hour later took it out of the 400 degree oven.
Crust looked good, but using Jumbo eggs I think made it more puffy than a normal pie.

I actually decided to look up what too many eggs do and found some gal experimented with too much or too little of a goodly number of items.
She said with extra eggs the pie will rise higher; in all her experiments , none of her pies tasted bad but getting some out of the pie tins was an exercise in frustration for a few she made.

As I type the second one is in the oven and about one-half done; I did add a little extra cream to the second so it would come out of the blender easier , so it will be interesting to see how it comes out.

Heading up to Brainerd to the other half's Niece's place tomorrow so I will get opinions on how good or bad the pie is.
I hope you all have a blessed and enjoyed THANKSGIVING THIS YEAR.

RpR, hope your pies turn out great. For the first time in years I am not responsible for making the pies. My daughter and Granddaughter are doing most of the cooking this year and bringing it here. I'm only responsible for the turkey, mashed potatoes, and gravy.
Wishing you all a blessed and Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Every year we travel about 45 miles north of where we live for a large extended-family gathering; my contribution for years has been deviled eggs and rutabagas - the eggs because I make really good deviled eggs, and not sure how I got roped into doing the rutabagas . You can imagine what our vehicle smells like by the time we get where we're going...

And I also made a pumpkin pie today; we're always too stuffed to want dessert after dinner, so a few years ago we started having pie for breakfast on turkey day. I always make my own pie crust - but I used canned pumpkin .

I mad mini pecan pies Monday, they served as breakfast snacks til today, but folks were trying not to eat them all the first day. Several make ahead items today are done, sweet potato casserole, dressing, giblets for the gravy that is also made. We will fry a turkey and make mac n cheese (from my grandson and wife) and have a sweet slice ham to prepare for tomorrow as well as a compote (cherries for pie filling, mandarin oranges, pineapple chunks and banana chunks) that is a favorite 'dessert' my granddaughter is making green bean casserole and helping her mom, as well as she did the gravy...my other mom in law is bringing pumpkin pie and breads as well as her jello mold. Guess we will be feeding 8 people tomorro. My SIL is in charge of drinks, cranberry for the great grandson who naturally has a cold and won't slow down since a 2yo has so much energy to burn, chuckl. Happy Thanksgiving everyone! ( pheasant, yummm.)

What I am thankful for... not having the big family dinner here!
We have an established routine - Thanksgiving is at the "lodge" (up north); Christmas Eve is at one of my sister-in-law's place, Christmas dinner at the other SIL, then New Year's Day at our house. By that time I've actually had a little time to clean the house and the Xmas decorations are still up... and then we sometimes also do Super Bowl Sunday as a potluck appetizer kind of thing here - no one actually watches much of the football, we just eat (and drink), kind of an indoor tailgate party!